Cameras show deer population better than expected after years of drought, extreme cold

CAMP VERDE — We just finished our annual census counts and placed game cameras at different blinds on Camp Verde Ranch.

The cameras are making us feel a whole lot better than the driving counts this year.

Two years of drought and extreme cold and blizzards have taken a toll on deer herds everywhere, especially here in the Hill Country. Camp Verde Ranch, despite great habitat and a deer herd we’ve worked hard to reduce during the past half decade, was no different.

We spent three hot nights driving the prescribed census routes on the ranch and some of our fears were confirmed. Numbers were noticeably down for bucks and does, even though we knew that there were many more deer than we were counting.

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We did not see any of the half dozen or so mature trophy bucks that we knew were there at the end of the season, but luckily they began showing up as soon as we filled corn feeders and began watching the deer that showed up on cameras.

One of those big bucks is one we’ve been calling Groucho for several years. He led ranch owner Bobby Parker on a merry-go-round chase from stand to stand last year. Bobby spent hours and hours sitting in blistering cold bow blinds trying to get a shot at the big deer. It never worked.

Pancho Prado found Groucho’s sheds and they scored a whopping 170 Boone and Crockett points, even though one G2 had been broken during a fight with another big buck last year.

One other big buck is one that last year had eight points straight up, in addition to a long drop tine off his left main beam. He spent the entire season around a feeder we set up adjacent to Bobby’s house.

This year, though, the buck has added points that make him a 10-pointer and the drop tine is at least 9 inches long. We’ve decided to call him Gum Drop and he could go onto the hit list for a bow hunter. He has changed locations, though, and has been showing up at the Lower Air Stand in the central part of the ranch. He could move back home by the time bow season opens Oct. 1 but he should be easy to find, no matter what.

One of the most exciting finds has been an old buck that let himself be photographed at the Upper Air blind about a half-mile away from Lower Air. He has nine points on his right main beam and a cluster of long tines sprouting off his left main beam.

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He is truly a prime specimen of a native Hill Country buck and of the kinds of trophies that can be produced by giving bucks in any part of the state time to grow and a little bit of food along the away.

Deer at Camp Verde Ranch don’t get fed pellet protein at all. They get cottonseed during spring and summer and wheat and oats in food plots when weather gives them a chance to grow. The past couple of years, though, have been mostly busts in terms of food plots.

There truly is no magic formula for growing trophy buck, whether in the traditional big buck country of the South Texas brush or in the live oak and persimmon habitat we have in the Hill Country.

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Age and food are the main things you have to pay attention to. Some years back, we had a nice buck in our neighborhood. My wife saw him right near our house and I saw him jump a fence just off the road that runs up to the highway.

One neighbor killed that buck on his property opening morning and he scored nearly 150 points B&C. When we first started paying close attention to the deer herd at CVR, numbers had climbed to nearly one adult deer per acre. It’s taken several years but the number now stands at about one adult deer to 7 acres. That’s more food and more room for deer to grow and the result is showing up in trophy bucks all over the ranch.

Have some patience and let a deer walk one year even if he has trophy antlers and you might be surprised at how good a buck can get.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Deer population in Texas better than expected after drought, cold