High fence guys...I need a little help

[Warwagon]

I have a few questions...

1st question.

What would you say the carrying capacity of a 1000 fenced acres should be based on the below info:

This 1000 acres is in south Texas close to Freer, there is plenty of water in the form of tanks and water troughs. 25-30k of protein is fed from Feb-July and the brush is very thick.

How many deer should be on the place?


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[STGS]

"25-30k of protein". Is that $$ or lbs?

[STGS]

I would say you could support 1 deer for every 8-10 acres. That is 100-125 deer. I would increase the protein to year round and add as many feeders as possible. If you intend to only feed for 6 months a year, I wound do 1 deer per 12 acres, or 80 deer.

[justin156bc]

I know of a place not to far from there that has great cover with 300-400 whitetail and 100-200 exotics. The place is fed heavily and it looks great no browse line and tons of cover. All in how much supplemental feed you want to feed. The place is 1200 acres.

[tigerscowboy]

Ask Trump about fences down there

[Warwagon]

25-30,000 pounds of protein


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[deerwatcher51]

I have a high fenced place in San Saba county and I try to maintain one adult deer to every ten acres with a one to one ratio. I do supplement with protein year around. I could carry more by supplementing more but that means having to harvest more each year. To me that is what it boils down to....how many deer are you willing to harvest each year. We hit predators pretty hard, so I generally harvest a number of deer that correlates to the number of fawns recruited each year.

[Slick8]

I would say you could support 1 deer for every 8-10 acres. That is 100-125 deer. I would increase the protein to year round and add as many feeders as possible. If you intend to only feed for 6 months a year, I wound do 1 deer per 12 acres, or 80 deer.

I'm far from an expert but agree with the above that I'd add more as many feeders as you can and year round.

To that, I'd strongly consider some food plots. Oats and clover is by far the easiest for fall through early spring. Summer is more difficult due to range conditions but surely could be done. This will allow the deer to spread out and feed naturally which will help if carry a high number of deer per acre.

Another simple trick would be to fertilize area's which contain high quality browse.

[TexasTK]

On my place I run about a deer to 8 acres. I have excellent habitat being most of ranch is creek and river bottom country. I normally feed on average 35 tons per year on a protein feeder per 100 acs. I shoot 35-40 native deer per year and the population stays pretty constant.

[Warwagon]

On my place I run about a deer to 8 acres. I have excellent habitat being most of ranch is creek and river bottom country. I normally feed on average 35 tons per year on a protein feeder per 100 acs. I shoot 35-40 native deer per year and the population stays pretty constant.

How many acres do you have if you don't mind me asking?


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[Warwagon]

So guys here's a little more info.

I'm leasing this property, it's 1000 HF acres. After my first visit, I felt like there were too many deer. The history of the ranch is a long story but I'll hit the high points. It's been fenced for 24 years, it was commercially hunted for a number of years but has been a deer lease for the last 4. THE owner introduced 12-2.5 y/o bucks and 2 does 6 years ago and 7 of the tagged bucks remain. These deer score from 160 to 200. I did notice from video that a lot of the tagged bucks get pushed around by the native deer and that leads me to wonder how much breeding from the tagged bucks has actually taken place?

I asked the owner how he counted deer and he said that he corns a road "near" the middle of the ranch for 30 days and counts deer on the 31st day. I'm not sure how effective that really is when there is lots of very thick brush throughout the ranch and various feeder locations spread out as well. What are your thoughts? What type of count do think is most effective?

In the past, my group has always counted deer on other ranches by Corning all the roads in normal hunting areas very heavily for a couple of days. Then we'd get in every stand and do a count from 7am-730am then one in the evening 430-500pm. I feel like it was an effective way to count the population. Thoughts?

One of my major concerns is that the landowner is hellbent on no more than 10 bucks. My plan is to let him count his way and 2 weeks later do a count my way and see what the numbers say.

Right now the landowner thinks the ranch is carrying 100-110 deer at 1:1 or close to it: I'm thinking he's missing 60-80 deer.

This is my place to manage for the next 5 years so I want to do it right.

For those of y'all saying feed more and add feeders and food plots. This is a small group of guys that stumbled into this, we aren't broke but cost is definitely an issue. The last group fed roughly 25-30000 pounds of protein at most over a 6 month period and that's based on the amount/capacity of the existing protein feeders. Once I add my feeders, the amount/capacity will more than double but honestly we can't afford to feed that much. So I'm trying to find a balance. One last detail...currently the existing protein feeders are kinda centrally located or very close to one another....my plan is to spread stand locations to the perimeter so we can hunt towards the middle and spread everyone out as far as possible...thoughts?

Thanks for all the help so far!!


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[gravesc987]

We have a high fence ranch just about the same size as you and we do a helicopter survey each year for 1,000 acres and it costs $500-550 including flight time and delivery (We use Southwest Texas Helicopters and they have been great). I don't know how many of y'all there are but I'd go this route and split it if you think you would be able to get a good count of the deer on your property. Might be the only way to show and convince the landowner how many more deer are out there, since his method seems pretty inefficient.

Don't really have anything to add about the protein feeders but we have ours equally spread out around the ranch and in areas that we do not hunt.

[jason86]

We have a ranch just about the same size as you and we do a helicopter survey each year for 1,000 acres and it costs $500-550 including flight time and delivery (We use Southwest Texas Helicopters and they have been great). I don't know how many of y'all there are but I'd go this route and split it if you think you would be able to get a good count of the deer on your property. Might be the only way to show and convince the landowner how many more deer are out there, since his method seems pretty inefficient.

Don't really have anything to add about the protein feeders but we have ours equally spread out around the ranch and in areas that we do not hunt.

We are low fence and did a helicopter survey this year, numbers didn't come close to what we viewed on trail camera and in person. I think stand counts are as accurate as your gonna get. To the op I thinks your doing it right, find out the actual numbers and eliminate mouths to feed after that.

[gravesc987]

We are low fence and did a helicopter survey this year, numbers didn't come close to what we viewed on trail camera and in person. I think stand counts are as accurate as your gonna get. To the op I thinks your doing it right, find out the actual numbers and eliminate mouths to feed after that.

Depends on the ranch, we don't have a lot of thick/old brush so we get a very good count on our deer that we've never been able to replicate by doing in stand counts. Also we see quite a few of the older bucks on the helicopter survey that we never see sitting in the stand or on the trail cam.

[dstrong]

So guys here's a little more info.

I'm leasing this property, it's 1000 HF acres. After my first visit, I felt like there were too many deer. The history of the ranch is a long story but I'll hit the high points. It's been fenced for 24 years, it was commercially hunted for a number of years but has been a deer lease for the last 4. THE owner introduced 12-2.5 y/o bucks and 2 does 6 years ago and 7 of the tagged bucks remain. These deer score from 160 to 200. I did notice from video that a lot of the tagged bucks get pushed around by the native deer and that leads me to wonder how much breeding from the tagged bucks has actually taken place?

I asked the owner how he counted deer and he said that he corns a road "near" the middle of the ranch for 30 days and counts deer on the 31st day. I'm not sure how effective that really is when there is lots of very thick brush throughout the ranch and various feeder locations spread out as well. What are your thoughts? What type of count do think is most effective?

In the past, my group has always counted deer on other ranches by Corning all the roads in normal hunting areas very heavily for a couple of days. Then we'd get in every stand and do a count from 7am-730am then one in the evening 430-500pm. I feel like it was an effective way to count the population. Thoughts?

One of my major concerns is that the landowner is hellbent on no more than 10 bucks. My plan is to let him count his way and 2 weeks later do a count my way and see what the numbers say.

Right now the landowner thinks the ranch is carrying 100-110 deer at 1:1 or close to it: I'm thinking he's missing 60-80 deer.

This is my place to manage for the next 5 years so I want to do it right.

For those of y'all saying feed more and add feeders and food plots. This is a small group of guys that stumbled into this, we aren't broke but cost is definitely an issue. The last group fed roughly 25-30000 pounds of protein at most over a 6 month period and that's based on the amount/capacity of the existing protein feeders. Once I add my feeders, the amount/capacity will more than double but honestly we can't afford to feed that much. So I'm trying to find a balance. One last detail...currently the existing protein feeders are kinda centrally located or very close to one another....my plan is to spread stand locations to the perimeter so we can hunt towards the middle and spread everyone out as far as possible...thoughts?

Thanks for all the help so far!!


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I know of a few place that are carrying roughly 500 deer on 1000 acres with zero degradation to natural habitat however they also don't just depend on protein stations but they dry land farm Tecomate food plots as well.

I'd focus more on what the deer that don't have tags in their ears look like vs what the deer that do have tags in their ears.

Native deer will definitely bully a penned raised deer and usually when they are mixed, native bucks typically will kill pen raised deer in fairly short order, however there are lots of other things that play in to this and it's not just black and white.

Good luck, sounds like you may have stumbled across a little diamond in the rough...