Deer season on the horizon
Texas Parks and Wildlife Department predicts fawn recruitment to be up ‘45-50 percent’
Opening day of Texas’ 2021-22 archery only season for white-tailed deer falls on Oct. 2. The general season gets underway statewide roughly a month later, Nov. 6. For Texas’ 770,000-plus deer hunters, the next few weeks won’t pass fast enough.
Deer season is a pretty big deal around here. No one gets more excited about curtain time than Alan Cain of Pleasanton. Cain is the white-tailed deer program leader for the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department.
Think of him like the quarterback on a talented team wildlife biologists who oversee the nation’s largest white-tailed deer herd — about 5.4 million.
It’s a tall order riding shotgun over so many animals in a massive state where most of the property is privately owned by an army of landowners who don’t always agree on what’s best for the deer. But somebody has got to do it.
One thing Cain has learned during his career is that no two deer seasons are ever the same. Nor are the range conditions across the state’s eight ecoregions from one year to the next.
The best hunting seasons almost always come on the heels wet springs and summers.
Like liquid fertilizer, timely rainfall spurs the growth of the nutritious goodies that are essential for survival, good fawn production and growing calcium crowns on bucks. Just the opposite can happen during extended periods of drought.
Cain recently released his 2021-22 deer hunting forecast. He prefaced the outlook with a summary of topsy-turvy weather events leading up to the big show. It began with drought, followed by a freak winter storm called “Uri” and late spring flooding that dumped more than 30 inches of rain on parts of the state in as many days.
While the February freeze killed all sorts of wildlife and damaged native plants, Cain says Texas whitetails came through it relatively unscathed.
“Despite faring well through the winter storm, deer were still facing a delayed spring green up resulting from limited soil moisture necessary to initiate the usual flush of nutrient-rich spring forbs crucial for antler growth and supporting pregnant does,” Cain said. “Freezing temperatures from the winter storm also resulted in topkill of important brush species in the more southern regions of the state further delaying green up.”
Big rains fell across much
of the state in May and the native landscape blossomed with a buffet of succulent forage to fuel antler growth on bucks, provide does with vital nutrition for rearing fawns and send plenty of animals into fall in great body condition.
Cain says antler quality is expected to be above average for most regions. Likewise, fawn recruitment is forecast to be well above average for much of the state, possibly as high as 4550 percent.
“Landowners and hunters should expect to see an increase in the overall statewide population if fawn recruitment predictions hold true coupled with a good carryover of deer from the 2020 hunting season,” Cain said.
Translation: It should be a pretty good year to be a Texas deer hunter. Possibly even better than last season, when hunters enjoyed a 63 percent success rate statewide.
Just keep in mind these words from the wise: “Although more deer may be on the landscape this fall, harvesting one may be challenging with a good acorn crop expected and good quality native forages likely available into November,” Cain said. “Hunting over a feeder may be a bit slow early in the season but should pick up later in November as cooler weather arrives.”