Adding weight to the deer herd.

[Hillbilly]

A friend of mine told me a way to put more weight on my deer herd. I was told to get a 50lbs of corn and dump it into a cow or horse troff and then add Antler King Pellets. He's from Wisconsin and says he has done this for the last 3 years and truly believes this had double the weight in his herd. Might do this for my herd as well.

Any thoughts?

[luckyman4]

Its going to take alot more than 50 lbs of corn and some pellets to double the weight of your deer herd, so plan on a significant investment if you are serious about supplemental feeding.

The biggest problem with supplemental feeding is that it does absolutley nothing to increase the carrying capacity of your habitat. In fact, by drawing more deer into an area than that spot can actually support, it causes the deer to overbrowse and ultimately decrease the amount of natural feed there. So, then you have to increase the amount of supplementing you do as time goes on. . . if one of these days you decide that's too expensive to continue, you have an overabundant deer herd on overbrowsed habitat, and the deer have to die or move on, and what will you be left with?

Do you want to increase the weight of the deer in your herd, or the size of the deer you harvest?? You can increase the size of the deer you harvest by only harvesting older deer. You can increase the carrying capacity of your property in about 1000 different ways, including foodplots, clearcuts, burning, and fertilizing. Good habitat makes for a healthy herd, and in that healthy herd will be more larger deer. If you are patient and shoot straight, you can double the weight of the deer you harvest, isn't that what you really want?

[LETMGROW]

Think about this!
If you took 50# of corn And 25# of pellets and stuffed them into a 100 # deer it would only weigh 175#. Not quite double by any means. If your friend has a herd of more than 1 deer he's really beat!

[anderson3]

I agree with the other guys here. The idea of putting out feed and doubling the weight of the local deer is approaching ridiculous.
First, you decide what you want to do and what you want to get and how you want to hunt. As far as the animal nutrition is concerned, a deer can only eat so much. So the impact of a feeding program depends on what is replaced in the diet by the corn/pellets. If you live in crop country surrounded by corn and beans and alfalfa, the feed in the trough may not be much better than what the deer are getting locally already. Feeding can definitely make bigger deer in some situations, but there is more to the story as luckyman4 noted previously. You may want to read some of the online articles at www.qdma.com for more information.
You ask a very good question.

[wtnhunt]

You would have to maintain a supplemental feeding program throughout the year for it to be effective at adding body size on your deer. Depending on your deer numbers, the 50 lb and 25 lb figures might be a per week figure.

Personally I prefer to implement food plots although I do put corn out at our mineral site where we have a cam located.

[dogdoc]

[ QUOTE ]
The biggest problem with supplemental feeding is that it does absolutley nothing to increase the carrying capacity of your habitat. In fact, by drawing more deer into an area than that spot can actually support, it causes the deer to overbrowse and ultimately decrease the amount of natural feed there. So, then you have to increase the amount of supplementing you do as time goes on. . . if one of these days you decide that's too expensive to continue, you have an overabundant deer herd on overbrowsed habitat, and the deer have to die or move on, and what will you be left with?


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I couldn't agree more!

[LETMGROW]

'nuf said

[Hillbilly]

[ QUOTE ]
'nuf said

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ok thanks.