Question: “I have land for deer hunting in Eastern Kansas. I want to grow bigger bucks, but I know that I have several full-rack whitetail bucks that I have seen this hunting season with missing brow tines. Should I remove these deer from my herd? In addition, I am also seeing quite a few spikes, most of them with spikes that are more than 10 inches in length, with decent mass too. Should these bucks be taken or will they grow to be larger bucks in the future? Any deer management info for this situation would be appreciated.”

Response: If you want to produce and grow bigger bucks, then I suggest learning as much as you can about deer management techniques. Manipulation of habitat and selective deer harvest can help by improving age and modifying genetics. Of course, property size is important in how much you can do for the deer in your area. The more property you have, the more you can do to help the animals in your area.

Hunters across the white-tailed deer’s range know that one of the best deer management practices out there is providing free-choice supplemental feed. In Texas, many hunters use food plots in the fall for deer hunting purposes, but more ranches use protein feeders for deer hunting than other other method of supplemental feeding. Protein pellets were initially offered in troughs, then came the feeder tubes and now this interesting protein feeder design from a well-known manufacturer.

Texas Hunter Products, a San Antonio based company known for making quality products for outdoor enthusiasts for over 50 years, has developed and patented a new feeder that makes feeding protein pellets easy and cost effective. Bob Brock, the company’s president had this to say about the feeder, “It’s one of the simplest and most affordable ways to accelerate antler growth in deer populations.”

Landowners and deer managers want to grow and produce big whitetail bucks—and hunters want to shoot them. If no one wanted to shoot them, then why would we put so much time and effort into deer management operations? The truth is that white-tailed deer represent THE big game animal of the majority of US hunters. But big bucks are not just susceptible to hunters, they can also be affected, even killed, by testosterone poisoning. So what is testosterone poisoning in deer, you ask?

Whitetail bucks go through many changes on an annual basis. Bucks experience antler growth, then those same antlers fall off. Bucks live happily in harmony during the summer, but then they fight to the death in the fall. Most of the major events in a buck’s life occur because of a single hormone, testosterone. For the most part, testosterone simply makes bucks more aggressive.