Deer like alfalfa in spring

Pulled cards at the farm over the weekend and got this one of a lot of deer and turkeys in the alfalfa field.

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I counted over 20 deer in that picture. Crazy.

You better get out there and reduce that herd or someone will report it and the dnr will come by to shoot them for you to prevent CWD or someone will say they saw a weird acting deer there and the dnr will come shoot them all off. It seems that’s the answer for a healthy herd in this area. Or someone who feels that they’re entitled to shoot a big deer every year will ask for point restrictions based on such a healthy herd. When it comes to an apparently healthy deer herd the dnr has lots of ways to screw it up.

Funny thing is Tom, the DNR won’t let us. Up until last year we could only get one deer a year and these numbers aren’t new to our farm. Last year they let us take an extra doe, but in theory we should be taking 3-4 per guy to get the numbers back in check.

I do hear what you are saying though. I hope point restrictions NEVER come to that area. That whole idea is ridiculous!

ps, if you can zoom the picture there is another herd at the end of the field. I count 34 deer and 8 turkeys

Are those deer numbers common in most fields in the area or only in select fields when a particular food source is prime? I do know some of those zone 200 areas have some of the higher deer numbers in the state.

Pretty common around the immediate area, but some fields do draw better than others obviously. Let’s just say you need to be careful driving around at sunset.

Alfalfa is a huge draw and at this time of year it’s going to be the highest protein food available until you get to the next alfalfa field. It also needs to be left longer to ensure better winter survival, so there tends to be more of it in the field for the deer to eat come spring.

Really hard to beat an alfalfa field for attraction.

I can understand how it’s hard for the DNR to please everyone with deer limits. What was it, about 5 years ago when we were all ripping the DNR for keeping the harvest too high after a series of hard winters?

Also, I think there is a major trend with hunters putting in fewer hours hunting overall. License sales don’t tell the story of hours actually in the field, I think there are a lot of hunters who have “aged out” of hunting and while they still may be buying a license, they are not in the stand day after day like they used to be.

Our neighboring propeties are all way down as far as numbers of hunters in the stand and overall there’s a big drop in the number of people in each group. They may still be buing licenses, but they aren’t hunting nearly as much as they used to.

Grouse

In my area we basically lack any kind of Ag of consequence. We do have a local farmer working our 20 ac home field. The farmer was planting annual amendment crops so there currently isn’t anything in the field in terms of a value hay crop. This spring the field had unusually high deer numbers (as many as 15-20 deer). My main guess is our field had more ground exposed so it warmed up & greened faster than any other field in the area. There must have been some type of plant to their liking such that they were choosing it over other established grass hay fields in the immediate area.

Also, it doesn’t seem this winter (albeit cold) had a strong impact on our area deer numbers. They’ve noticeably improved since the 2013-2014 winters.