Well, I hope you have been feeding your deer since January. Even though some places I hunt are small (less than 50 acres), some are large like my other place Lottie Wildlife Protection Association that is 20,000 acres.
When you pick an area to hunt, especially in the early season, you are hunting the group of deer in the surrounding area that live there except during breeding times. So if you give them protein (I plant arrow leaf clover in my fall food plots on September 15th – it is 40 percent protein, and the deer seem to leave it alone until it gets about 3 feet tall in April or May, and then they wack it down), protein supplements and lots of minerals with extra calcium starting in January you can be assured that the deer you are hunting/seeing are going to be in top nutritional health.
Sure you may feed a few deer, pigs, coons possums, etc., that you either don’t see or don’t care to see, but I think you will be amazed to see what it will do for the size of horns on 3- and 4-year-old deer.
I have seen some 30-inch jumps in one year on deer; you don’t see this very often if you are not supplementing their diets.
Most people think they are waisting time and money supplementing if they don’t have large tracts, but that is wrong. You don’t have to feed all the deer, just the ones that you are hunting.
I would be thinking of getting your work done soon so that you can let the woods settle before the start of the season.
Good hunting.
