I just had an email exchange with the state biologist who toured my lease. She says the biggest impediment to a better deer population is the timber company itself. They are managing for timber, not deer. I have hundreds of acre's that is unhuntable, because its pine thicket and its to thick to get into and hunt. Until they come thin it, we are stuck. If I could cut lanes down through it with a forestry mulcher and plant it, then I could. Then I also have hundreds of acres of pines with no understory except briars. It's basically pine straw. Only way you see deer there is they are moving thru it from 1 area to another.

So I have 1050 acres. I can probably effectively hunt 400 acre's of it. If I have 10 active hunters, that is 40 acres per hunter. That is a ton of pressure, which is why so many of the deer move at night. They go sit in the pine thickets which do have food and water in them, and come out and move towards the middle of the property, which is where we have food plots, and then they zip back to the pine thickets in the early morning hours.

My biologist contends we are probably only seeing about 10% of the deer on our property. She says the reason we see so many spikes is because they are dumb. LOL!