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Post by kl9 on Mar 12, 2017 7:51:52 GMT -6
Seems to me MN is spotty. Area with food deer #s, areas with poor #s. Herd balance is also very spotty. I have neighbors that are two miles away and they can see many more deer than me. My buddy shot a deer with the mzzle and there were over 60 deer on the field with only one or two small bucks. I see 14 deer in 7-9 days of hunting and see about even numbers of adult bucks and adult does. Out habitat is also vastly different. Does he have more ag?
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Post by Sandbur on Mar 12, 2017 11:48:55 GMT -6
I have about 100 acres of cover surrounded by corn, beans, and alfalfa. (I own 170 acres-the rest is rental land.)
He owns 2 quarter sections of a high proportion of ag, but they border on a 300 plus acre pine plantation.
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Post by MN Slick on Mar 13, 2017 9:33:35 GMT -6
I have about 100 acres of cover surrounded by corn, beans, and alfalfa. (I own 170 acres-the rest is rental land.) He owns 2 quarter sections of a high proportion of ag, but they border on a 300 plus acre pine plantation. It's a shame you don't have better hunting Sandbur. What you describe would be absolutely amazing hunting in every other state in the midwest. MN managment is a disaster!!
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Post by jbird on Mar 13, 2017 9:46:18 GMT -6
Comparing deer harvested per sq. mile in central MN to ag country in IN isn't exactly apples to apples. My area has more woods/swamp/grassland pasture than row crop. I don't know what is harvested here for sure, I believe around 8-10 psm. There are also 10-12 hunters psm. How many hunters per square mile in your county? So you're harvesting more than twice the average number of deer per sq mile on your acreage than county wide? How many acres do you have? Just seems odd to me to see a person state that they have low deer numbers, then state they kill on average 5-6 deer a year. That's all. Oh - I get it. And I'm not offended or trying to stir anything either. This is where forums are the most interesting to me as we can discuss our regional differences and learn something about an area we may never have visited. And most of all we may realize what we consider "low" isn't the same "low" to other people. In my state I am low - we have counties that kill 2 and 3 thousand deer a year (some break into the 4's) on a regular basis. My county struggles to kill 800. Am I as low as you - I have no idea. I don't have enough data to tell you for certain what my local DPSM is and my state sure as hell doesn't have that info either. My point with deer numbers and the kill per square mile is that I simply lack significant cover to support a large number of deer. Without the cover you can't have deer. That is simply the limitations of my area I am contending with. In MN it sounds like you have the cover, and still no deer, much more frustrating under those circumstances. My immediate area has some better cover and a little more of it.....I figured it up in the 2 square miles my farm is part of we have about 22% of the land area in some sort of "cover".......and that's better than most in my county. I hunt and work my place out of 2 things. Stuborness and laziness. My farm has been in my wife's family since WWII and I will have to see her in court before we sell! I also live on the property so it's right there. I feel I have done what I can for the most part with what I have to work with and other limitations. I would love to plant all the crop fields to cover, but those crop fields add a nice bump to the household income that we appreciate at this point in my life. So that said - unless I can find a program where I can continue to make income from it while it being into some sort of cover....it's not going to happen. I have already done everything I am aware of from a CRP perspective that is available to me and within what I am looking for. Not to toot my own horn but I went from not even getting a chance to kill a deer for 2 years, to getting a single deer a year to now taking multiple deer a year and even now a few decent ones from time to time. I didn't do it all on my own, but it is much better than it was 2 decades ago. So maybe my "low" and yours are different.... Early on around here it wasn't a matter of which deer you wanted to shoot.....it was a matter of if you wanted a deer or not! We tend to have some choice now, but it isn't like you have a dozen deer in the plot and you get to pick one either. In most cases your selection of bucks is one at a time and does is often a mater of shooting the adult doe or a fawn that is with her. I certainly have never had a parade of deer. To answer your questions: I have 150 acres - 100 of it is wide open crop field the other 50 are long narrow strips along creeks and steep banks with small 5 to 10 acre blocks of cover. My neighbors tend to have larger blocks of the cover that tend to be better for holding the deer......I just feed them and hope the does that come for the food bring some bucks with them. My hunter density here is probably 4 or 5 per square mile in firearms season. Again cover is so limited and thus deer numbers so low most folks don't even waste their time......greener pastures in other counties not too far away.
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Post by Sandbur on Mar 13, 2017 11:39:18 GMT -6
I have about 100 acres of cover surrounded by corn, beans, and alfalfa. (I own 170 acres-the rest is rental land.) He owns 2 quarter sections of a high proportion of ag, but they border on a 300 plus acre pine plantation. It's a shame you don't have better hunting Sandbur. What you describe would be absolutely amazing hunting in every other state in the midwest. MN managment is a disaster!! Actually I have some hope. My brother in law saw 10 run into my woods/ neighbors's swamp on Saturday night. That is a good sign. I hope they clean up my corn foodplot.
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