Aldeer.com Forums Alabama Deer Talk Serious Deer Talk Forum The Perception of Scale

Yep, not unless they are hemmed in by some kind of barriers.

There IS a dynamic at play with balancing cover and food though. These quail plantations are a good example to use here. In some situations what you have occurring is dormant season fire being applied year after year causing an overabundance of grass. Let’s say we’ve done this to the point that our understory is 75% grass and 25% forbs/legumes……In this situation we’ve created boatloads of cover that’s capable of holding way more deer than what we have food. The problem here is that all of those deer arent just going to abandon the cover when the primo food runs out…..They’re going to utilize EVERYTHING down to the sweetgums….and its only after they’ve fully exploited the food resource that they’ll abandon the cover in search of new ground.

Now, an expert might come in and look at the situation and say…”Wow!.....Y’all need to start slaying the does to help correct this issue!”…….But in reality what they likley need to do is correct the habitat management that is taking place that’s causing the imbalance of grasses……They need to reduce grass down to 25-30% and bring forbs up to 70%........This creates a situation where cover becomes a limiting factor that starts driving expansion well before the food resources are so heavily exploited. This dynamic between cover and food is at play everywhere to some degree.