The Buras marsh is going bye bye, but what’s left of it still holds incredible early spring action.
Deer season is over. But for those of us who live for the months of October, November, December and January, deer season never ends.
Even in the spring and summer months, when the memories of last season’s harvests flood our senses with each bite of venison spaghetti, we’re thinking about those deer in our forests and fields at that very moment. How are the fawns progressing? Have the does hidden them well? Are predators a problem? Is it raining enough to keep the herd healthy? How wide are those velveted racks getting? And most importantly, do all those deer have enough to eat?
The Quality Deer Management Association has made it easy for hunters to answer a lot of their questions through its 2009 Whitetail Report, which is available at www.qdma.com/media/.
As its name implies, QDMA is committed to helping hunters improve the overall quality of their hunting experiences by, among other things, passing on younger bucks and harvesting only mature whitetails. The group has made some serious inroads throughout the deer-hunting community in recent years.
The report is large, and it’s extensive, but it’s anything but cumbersome. For those who love deer management as much as deer hunting, it’s like reading a cook book packed with your favorite recipes. We’ve dissected the report, and have included highlights, maps and graphics beginning on p. 28 of this issue.
Whether you hunt the deer-rich Delta or some of Louisiana’s deer deserts, the report is slam packed with suggestions to improve the overall size and health of your herd. Your land may not be capable of growing anything to rival Louisiana’s most-famous deer, the McMurray buck, but it certainly has the potential to hold more deer and produce bigger racks. You just need to make some changes, and the report is loaded with suggestions.
Some are expensive and are only realistic for Wall Street CEOs, but others don’t require anything more than a few coins and some elbow grease. As deer-lease holders or woods owners, we don’t necessarily have to work harder; we just have to work smarter.
Read the report, and you’ll do a lot more of the latter than the former.
