deer

Wildlife & Farming

Historically farmers were wildlife’s best friend – small farms created large amounts of edge and, often when left, waste grain in the fields benefitted wildlife in winter. Unfortunately, farming today employs many practices that are not beneficial to wildlife. Clean-Farming, or the small farm, with its many fields, fence rows, and ditches (all sources of…

Poaching

Illegal, uncontrolled harvest of wildlife is known as poaching and it threatens the survival of wild animal populations. Today we’ll discuss poaching and its negative impacts on your wildlife. Unfortunately, poaching is more common than you may think. A lot of times you will find evidence like pictured below: this is a male deer who has…

Trophy Deer Management & QDM

To expand upon our last post of the role of harvesting wildlife, one of the ways that wildlife managers can manipulate hunting to influence wildlife populations is Trophy Deer Management and Quality Deer Management (QDM). These obviously relate specifically to deer populations, but these large herbivores are one of your biggest revenue streams and need…

Wildlife & Harvest: Part I

Now its time to go over your personal feelings about hunting with a fine-toothed comb. Harvesting animals is one of the wildlife managers most useful and effective tools. Before we get into how harvesting (hunting, fishing, and trapping) fits into your tool belt (and your feelings about it), lets discuss the reasons why. In most…

Wildlife Diseases & Habitat Quality

There is a strong correlation between wildlife diseases and their habitats. Today we’ll discuss those diseases and how what’s surrounding them can contribute. More importantly, we’ll also go over diseases that can be passed to us humans and what we can do to prevent them. Before we get started, here are some concepts to keep…

Types of Wildlife Mortality

As a follow up from the last post, today we’ll go over the different types of wildlife mortality. There are many different ways your animals can die, when we discuss these ways, you can see how to prevent these types of mortality as much as possible. Starvation and Malnutrition: Starvation is death or debilitation caused…

Migration

We’ll finish up our discussion of movement with the second type of movement: Migration. Migration is a periodic movement involving a round-trip! There are two types of migration: Altitudinal Migration: animals migrate relatively short distances up and down mountains out west e.g., big game (elk, mule deer, moose) – their “summer” and “winter” ranges Latitudinal Migration: animals migrate a long distance;…

Wildlife Nutrition

Wether you’re managing 1,000 acres in food plots, or only have a small area you want to make more appealing to your neighborhood wildlife, knowing what nutrients an animal needs is the first step. Its important to remember that animals in good condition generally have higher reproduction rates and are more resistant to all forms…