It would be so nice to for farmers to know the weather months in advance.  They could certainly increase the yield of their crops by timing, maintaining, and harvesting their crops if they could accurately predict the weather in advance.  All of us would love to be able to schedule our vacation when the weather would be perfect.  However, farmers, vacationers and gads of others simply must put the odds in their favor and take their best shot.

The same is true for deer managers.  We need to plant our food plots at optimal times because weather prediction science is such that the five day forecast is rarely reliable, let alone the three month forecast.  The pendulum swings both ways, sometimes the weather is better than predicted, and sometimes it’s worse.

Monday of this week the weather forecast for The Proving Grounds called for a solid week of 100+ degree heat.  There was no rain in sight.  Yesterday, we were blessed to receive 1.5” of rain!!!  That rain may have added a few more inches of antler to a few bucks, more bushels of beans produced in some of my food plots, and a few more pounds to some fawns preparing for winter.  It was a huge blessing.  My parents live thirty miles away and they only received 0.2” of rain.

Resources for deer at my place would be very limited if the local population was higher.  The average stress level for each deer would be significantly more, and therefore the quality of each deer significantly less.  Weather is an uncontrollable factor in deer herd management.  Not only is it uncontrollable for free-ranging deer herds, it can be a limiting factor.  Given this, it’s always best to maintain the deer population at less than maximum capacity during good conditions.  That way, the herd will maintain or prosper even during unfavorable conditions.  Preparing for the uncontrollable factors is part of the art of deer hunting and deer management.

Growing Deer (in all conditions) together,

Grant