Bow Ben
Member
Skip you couldn't be referring to our home state could you?
Ya he sure is Suckville, Michigan.....I grew up there!!
SaskGuy
Active Member
Just some food for thought.
Deer numbers in Iowa are gigantic compared to here and I believe our numbers are healthy. I honestly don't believe mother nature ever deals out more than animals can handle.
I also believe that without plots they'd still have lots of food in Iowa and as a result, your herd would be healthy.
I don't know for sure obviously as I am an outsider looking in but things aren't too bad where there is little food in winter and there is snow on the ground for 6 months therefore things would seem pretty good in Iowa without all the food plots, no?
Just tossing out some thoughts, I'm one of those guys that sees an acre of standing beans in Jnauary no more "natural" than those beans combined and dumped. I know I'm in the minority but I'm looking at it with no dog in the fight so to speak.
Deer numbers in Iowa are gigantic compared to here and I believe our numbers are healthy. I honestly don't believe mother nature ever deals out more than animals can handle.
I also believe that without plots they'd still have lots of food in Iowa and as a result, your herd would be healthy.
I don't know for sure obviously as I am an outsider looking in but things aren't too bad where there is little food in winter and there is snow on the ground for 6 months therefore things would seem pretty good in Iowa without all the food plots, no?
Just tossing out some thoughts, I'm one of those guys that sees an acre of standing beans in Jnauary no more "natural" than those beans combined and dumped. I know I'm in the minority but I'm looking at it with no dog in the fight so to speak.
Saskatchewan allows baiting. I tried it one yr and din't enjoy it and never killed anything there. We also have lots of cwd but almost 100% of the cases have been in prairie rangeland mule deer that don't come to bait so to speak yet 100's of whitetails group up in winter in areas of food such as grain piles left due to harvest or second cut alfalfa haystacks yet cwd is almost non existent. I'm no scientist but..............................weird.
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loneranger
Well-Known Member
Also,,the Texas deserts should be filled with disease, dotted,, as the desert is with Auto Corn Feeders everywhere.? Maybe it is,,dunnno?
180class
Well-Known Member
I was able to sit down and watch this meeting in it's entireity last night. It was very informative. They touched on many of the hot topics that I've seen come up within the past few years. It's nice to get factual information straight from the horses mouth, rather then hear say and rumors from people who have no idea what is truely going on with the DNR and our conservation program. My hats off to Mark, Terry, DNR and everyone involved with this. Well done!
There's places in IA where there's still very high deer populations- more timbered areas in very rural settings- far less food. The LOW populations are in the majority of the state- areas with small wood lots BUT huge areas of food. What would be ideal is to flip-flop those deer populations... Have high pops in areas with vast ag fields and have low numbers where it's mainly timber & pasture area with fewer ag areas.
There's many areas in IA where they have more timber with smaller fields.... those fields get combined in September through October. Right away you'll see 20, 30, 40 deer out there a night.... In my experience/opinion, lots of those fields are cleaned up within about 3 weeks usually. Especially with our advanced combining equipment. Now, in many cases, I've seen almost all the fields cleaned out by mid-Nov and starting in Dec- the deer are scratching around in them with little luck. Combine that with high deer numbers, a bad/cold/heavy snow winter with -30 temps, deer are put through major stress and we've heard of lots of cases where deer don't make it. If they do, the deer are very stressed, have sub-par racks next year, the does look thin/ribbed out, fawns are in rough shape, etc, etc. Bottom line: I do believe there's AREAS in IA where deer go through a great deal of winter stress and do not have adequate food for optimal conditions- everything from enough to die all the way to enough stress that they are not at optimal health. Leaving plenty of food for all critters gets many through winter, helps with recovery, helps fawns, moms & will in turn allow bucks to put more energy into growing racks next spring since they were able to build back up from the rut & winter.
Any extra food that can be left is well known to aid Pheasants through tough winters, turkeys, quail, deer, etc. Why many conservation/wildlife agencies will help with $, free seed, etc. At a MINIMUM, I know it helps on my place!
dedgeez
death from above
I have to agree. You are comparing 2 completely different areas. Saskatchewan is a completely different animal than Iowa. Your main crops are alfalfa and oats which are in the field in one form or another all year correct? Correct me if I'm wrong but these are considered Lentils which are super high in protein and offer loads of nutrition for your deer. Last I read, Saskatchewan provides over 90% of the lentils for all of Canada. So my point is that your deer have IMO a abundance of nutrition and half of the pressure from hunters going into your winters. And even when the snow becomes to deep to traverse, they have thousands of acres to browse. Their systems slow down so greatly in winter that they can live well on browse and the nutrients that they store in the fall. This is the problem here in Iowa. We have little to no browse in most of the state and our farming practices have become so efficient that there is very little waste grain left in the fields come fall. The bean fields are picked clean and most of our corn gets turned under after it is combined. I agree that deer are one of the ultimate survivalists and can make it through some incredibly tough times, but adding nutrients to their home territory for them to be healthy at the toughest times of year (winter, spring) is never detrimental in my opinion. I just like knowing that the deer on or around the properties I hunt are going to be able to pack on enough body mass and fat to make it through our brutal NE Iowa winters with no major issues.
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180class
Well-Known Member
during the discussion, Willie mentioned that a whitetails metabolism slows way down during the winter months. They don't necessarily need the high protein foods to withstain until the spring time. He said that they can survive just fine off of brome and other brows. There is plenty of that throughout the state. I'm not saying that I totally agree with the DNR's stance that supplemental feeding is a bad thing, I'm just saying that it's been proven by the state deer biologists, that it's not necessary. Like Willie said, it's an issue of risk vs. reward. Is the reward of feeding them throughout the winter months worth the possible risk of a horrible disease like CWD?
dedgeez
death from above
My bad, I should have been more clear on my post. I wasn't referring to supplemental feeding. I was referring to food plots aiding in giving them the nutrients they need after the fall harvest going into winter and coming out of winter. Not dumping hundreds of pounds of corn out for them in the winter. Sorry :way:
I completely agree that deer do not need a whole lot of food in the winter and can survive on browse, but as I said before we do not have much for available for them. The example you gave of them eating brome and such. That is great, except for the fact that the last 3 winters here in NE Iowa the snow has been so deep that alot of the CRP grasses aren't even visible and the snow is so deep that you see very few of the deer in the fields. I certainly don't have the answers, but I like knowing that the deer in my area are as healthy as can be after the hunting seasons going into the brutal months.
Now...... As far as the difference between supplemental feeding and food plots.......... I will leave that for another discussion as I know how some of the guys on here feel about that. :grin:
loneranger
Well-Known Member
Past few winters all deer left my property come winter, for corn fields miles away. I have clover/rape/rye. but also last winter put out a little supp- food to keep some around. I did keep a small group of does around all winter. They were there come spring. I liked having a few around. Don't think a small supp feeding brought undo disease and destruction upon the HERD....
SaskGuy
Active Member
Our main crops are actually wheat and canola. Yes there are oats and yes there is alfalfa. The alfalfa would provide little nutritional value after mid Nov. I'd suspect as basically it is just dried brown stems under snow at that point and not again until late May when it starts to come back to life. Oats are grown as a cereal grain mostly for cattle food and would provide a bit of food when young and tender and then not again until ripe but as with anyting once ripe, then comes the combine. Lentils are actually a legume pulse crop similar to peas but smaller in the seed itself and more of a disc shape. Mst lentils are grown in the southern part of SK, where whietails take a back seat to mulies. The 90% of Canada's lentils just speaks about how few lentils are grown in Canada outside of SK, much like SK itself has no soybeans like our eastern neighbor Manitoba.
I do hear what you're saying regarding browse and the fact they are "diff't animals" so to speak but I would hate for you to overestimate the am't of food available in winter due to agriculture.
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JNRBRONC
Well-Known Member
They sure paw up the alfalfa fields here during the winter and it is nature's version of "hay". I'd guess it would have decent nutritional value.
hammes357
New Member
i just watched a sit down with the dury fellas and the iowa dnr on the outdoor channnel and as a low man on the food chain that has ask for permission every year i just thought what the hell are these guys talking to the dnr for? the dnr needs guys like me and you at there table! i just think it's a buch of crap-good luck getting permission in my area durys you do not represent the real iowa hunter!
Is Mark Drury a TRUE resident of Iowa.....you tell me!
Ok, so I look on the drury team page and Mark says he lives in Osceola, Iowa and his daughter Taylor (just a few people down), lives in St. Charles, Missouri and Mark and his wife are not divorced:
http://www.druryoutdoors.com/team.php
Then I search St. Charles, Missouri & Mark Drury in the Whitepages and this is the address I find:
http://www.whitepages.com/name/Mark-A-Drury/Saint-Charles-MO/2yhw9sj
And then I look the address up on the St. Charles Missouri assessor's page and here's who owns the home at the address:
http://assessor.sccmo.org/assessor/index.php?option=com_assessordb&Itemid=49
The DNR interview looks "fishy" if I look at Mark's background above!
Ok, so I look on the drury team page and Mark says he lives in Osceola, Iowa and his daughter Taylor (just a few people down), lives in St. Charles, Missouri and Mark and his wife are not divorced:
http://www.druryoutdoors.com/team.php
Then I search St. Charles, Missouri & Mark Drury in the Whitepages and this is the address I find:
http://www.whitepages.com/name/Mark-A-Drury/Saint-Charles-MO/2yhw9sj
And then I look the address up on the St. Charles Missouri assessor's page and here's who owns the home at the address:
http://assessor.sccmo.org/assessor/index.php?option=com_assessordb&Itemid=49
The DNR interview looks "fishy" if I look at Mark's background above!
Crimson Arrows
Well-Known Member
Mark's actually :way:
Iowa deer do not need food plots, we are kidding ourselves if we think so.
Yes some food plot plants are good for deer but still not nessarry.
Most people are planting food plots because of greed!!!!
We are all to worried about our neighbors shooting a buck or thee buck we might want..... so we plant the buffet to suck the deer away from him.
Where did the Sportsmanship go in hunting, every vidieo is pushing food plots.
What happened to Deer Hunting, do we really want to teach our childen to just plant wait and shoot?
Yes some food plot plants are good for deer but still not nessarry.
Most people are planting food plots because of greed!!!!
We are all to worried about our neighbors shooting a buck or thee buck we might want..... so we plant the buffet to suck the deer away from him.
Where did the Sportsmanship go in hunting, every vidieo is pushing food plots.
What happened to Deer Hunting, do we really want to teach our childen to just plant wait and shoot?
From 2010-11 Iowa Hunting Regulations:
Resident
means a natural person who meets
one of the following criteria.
1. Has physically resided in this state as the
person’s principal and primary residence or domicile
for period of not less than 90 consecutive days
immediately
1. Has physically resided in this state as the
person’s principal and primary residence or domicile
for period of not less than 90 consecutive days
immediately
before applying for or purchasing
I wonder if Mark would fall under this regulation?
a resident license and has an Iowa drivers license
or non operators ID. A person is not considered
a resident under this paragraph if the person is
residing in the state only for a special or temporary
purpose including but not limited to engaging in
hunting, fishing or trapping.or non operators ID. A person is not considered
a resident under this paragraph if the person is
residing in the state only for a special or temporary
purpose including but not limited to engaging in
I wonder if Mark would fall under this regulation?