Deer Vanishing

My answer:

I don’t know if this applies, but here is what I’m experiencing in SW Bracken County, KY.

First off, investigate the harvest numbers published by the state. I started tracking KY’s deer harvest numbers for my county and the surrounding area 25 years ago. What I see is steady growth peaking in 2015. This pretty well matches the numbers in my county and the county directly to my west. The counties elsewhere in my region peaked out much later and overall my county’s numbers have not kept up with the growth to others in my region. I don’t know what’s causing it, but it’s a big trend. If I had to guess, I’d say it’s the aggressive stance the state has taken reducing herd numbers in my region, Zone1. Zone1 has unlimited antlerless harvest. The state wants to reduce herd size and it is working.

Locally, the overall makeup of the hunters has changed. It used to be that several of my neighbors did nothing to manage their habitat. They also had too many hunters out during rifle season, and there was a lot of poaching. Back then, my place was a sanctuary. All the deer came over onto my property to escape the Orange Army. Starting a decade ago, several properties changed hands, and dedicated deer hunters moved in. There are a lot more food plots springing up. There is also signs of timber stand improvement. Google Earth is telling me a lot of what’s going on. The good news is that poaching has dropped off significantly. The bad news is that the neighbors are making their properties more attractive to deer and it means I need to up my game.

Poaching can be a big problem. We had one clan that moved in a few years after me. They poached relentlessly and deer and turkey disappeared for a couple of years entirely. Once they were evicted, it took a couple of years for the herds and flocks to recover.

The biggest influence? I had a neighbor to my north that used to spend $800/year on corn feeders. He had one big one near the corner of the property. He’d admitted to me that he was just feeding my deer. They were coming from my property, feeding all night at his corn piles and then coming back over to my place during the day. He sold out and for the next 2 years, we were inundated with mature bucks roaming around. That eventually dwindled.

1) Look at what the state is reporting. It may be a regional trend and it’s bigger than you.
2) Make sure there is not a lot of poaching going on. That can really muck things up
3) Check Google Earth and find out what’s going on around your property.
3) Talk to the warden and the biologist.

One other thing: You hear about habitat loss. Yeah, but a lot of that can be natural habitat maturation. What used to be prime deer habitat eventually matures into stuff that’s less attractive to deer. Somebody came in and logged a bunch of cedars about a decade before we got the property. When we moved in that was prime bedding habitat. Now that the stuff has grown, we see far fewer deer utilizing it. In some places, the canopy has grown over places that used to be filled with woody browse. Now, it’s become a shady deer desert. This next year, I’m planning quite a bit of re-arranging. I’ve got cedar thickets that have outlived their usefulness. Those are going to be bulldozed at the earliest opportunity.

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