September Rain

How many deer are too many deer? These are a couple different pictures of the browsing pressure that our property is under during the summer months when there is the most amount of forage available for consumption. The recent rain has sure helped everything green up and germinate.

Need a lawnmower, this is off the "Big Field" where we have about 25 acres of food planted, there was probably about 6 inhes of growth inside the fence. We have about 4 acres of clover, 5 acres of clover/chicory mix, 5 acres of sorghum, 5 acres of beans/turnips and 5 acres of turnips. we tryed planting some corn as a screen around the edges of the field and a strip down the middle but it obviously didnt work out. You can see what is left of the few protected stalks that the deer haven't devoured. On another note the turnips are coming up really well, even in the area we planted in the beans because they were getting eaten down so hard.

It isnt always the obvious that gets noticed, looking at these young maple trees you would think they were intended to grow without leaves near the ground.  But that is not the case, that is a typical browse line in an over populated forest that can not support that number of current wildlife calling it home.  This winter we will need to go through and hinge cut these trees to get the forage near the ground.

I havent had cameras out this early in September before, it sure is fun getting pictures of these bucks coming out of velvet. Supposedly they eat the stuff and it is thought to be high in nutrients.

This buck looks decent with good brow tines but his G2 & 3's are a little lacking. His body is starting to fill out and look muscular which is a good sign. Hopefully we will get another angle of him to see how wide he is.

This buck is also decent but could use another year or two of growing to reach maturity.