Texas Whitetails by Larry Weishuhn

Texas Guns by Steve LaMascus
March 13, 2018
Public Hog Hunting
March 16, 2018

The Whitetail Acre

M ight want to grab your fly rods!” I told Josh and Jake. “Bluegill should be biting. Put them behind the seat with mine. The back of the truck is loaded with “T” posts and barbed wire.”

Two of my grandsons, Josh and Jake, had volunteered to help out at “The Whitetail Acre,” my little place in northern Colorado County, part of the old Zimmerscheidt Community.

They were in town, and I wanted to take advantage of their help putting fences around what would soon be a spring, and later, a fall food plot. I also had plans for them helping me pile some dead cedars on brush piles to provide cover for various oak, mulberry and persimmon trees I had recently planted.

This would also create a couple of “wind rows” made of dead cedar to protect honeysuckle we would plant before piling the limbs on top of the new plants. This would provide both cover and support for what I hoped would be a natural food plot once the vines started growing.

“Big plans!” I heard Josh say as he loaded the chainsaw on the truck. 

“Reckon we’ll have time to look for sheds?” asked Jake. I nodded an affirmative before getting into the pickup for the 30-minute drive to the property

“I’d love for us to find the sheds from that big eight-point that kept giving you the slip,” he said.

So did I. During the latter part of December, I had seen the buck numerous times, but only briefly as if to tease me. Thankfully, I had seen him the last evening of the season. I knew he had made the season and would, I hope, be bigger next year. We had left numerous, likely two-year bucks which had been almost legal—a buck with at least four points on one side and a minimum inside spread of 13-inches.

The one thing I wanted to be certain of, is to provide sufficient quality and quantity of forage for the deer to develop to their full potential. Fertilized food plots is one of our ways of doing so. We are fortunate we have decent top soil, and for the most part sufficient precipitation to grow forage.

Calling in predators is part of deer management, too.

Calling in predators is part of deer management, too. Photo by Larry Weishuhn

I bought fertilizer from a local feed/fertilizer store. In early March it will be used to fertilize some of the oak trees on the property by digging a narrow ditch just along the edge of the drip-line; the reach of the outer most branches where many of the trees’ “feeder roots” are found.

I will also fertilize some of the yaupon, a prevalent evergreen in our area, and then also patches of dewberry and smilax, also known as greenbrier. These native plants respond well to fertilization. Then too, I will apply fertilizer to my existing food plots based on a soil analysis.

By weekend’s end Jake, Josh and I had built fences around three new food plots, amounting to about two acres each (4,850 square yards per acre). A bit later in the spring I will plant these plots in a variety of seeds including some of Tecomate’s mixtures and blends, but also so corn, sunflowers, okra and milo. The latter not only for food, but also for cover; planting six rows of the taller plants, then 12 rows of Tecomate’s blends, then repeating this alternating pattern across the field.

I wish I could tell you we found the sheds of the big eight-point, but we did not. We did find a couple of small antlers. By comparing the size of where the antlers attached to the skull to the main beam just above the burr, I confirmed what I thought. The pedicel and the main beam were about the same size, indicating their age. Had they been older the main beam circumference should have been larger then the pedicel attachment area.

We did catch a mess of bluegills between building fences and piling up dead cedar. Sunday evening I fried them up along with a sack of potatoes. Habitat management and creation is hungry work!

Two days after the boys left, I grabbed my Ruger Super Blackhawk Hunter .44 Mag revolver loaded with Hornady’s 240-grain XTP (I think I heard my Ruger No. 1 in .405 Win topped with a TrackingPoint scope whimper about being left behind), grabbed my Convergent Hunting Solutions mouth-blown calls and headed back to the place in hope of calling in and removing a bobcat or coyote to help save some fawns.

Totally uncharacteristic of bobcats, no sooner did I start blowing than a big tom appeared out of the briars about 75 yards away. When he stopped broadside, I squeezed the trigger on the Ruger revolver, and the cat fell dead.

Late winter and early spring predator control, too, is a part of deer management.

 

Email Larry Weishuhn at ContactUs@fishgame.com

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