We're Preparing for Fall Trophy Whitetail Hunts Now

Blue Creek Whitetails Trophy Buck

We can't wait until fall to begin preparing for hunting and the pace is picking up through the heat of the Texas summer.  We’ve had protein feeders all year round.  We’ve also been putting our cameras out to help determine where our bucks are on the Ranch.  This is an 8,000 acre ranch so it’s a job to figure out where the deer are hiding at any given time.  Some of the older bucks are visiting the protein feeders less often because we’ve got a lot of rice fields that provide both water and a great source of carbs for the deer to eat.  The Ranch foreman and I have noticed that as we look for certain deer that we haven’t seen all year on camera, that they’re just not coming to the protein feeders.  So we’ve started our corn feeding a little early and we’re doing some reconnoissance to find some of these really big bucks.  Of course, we’re seeing some big bucks already, but there are some of these “Jurassic Park” deer that we’ll be looking to locate over the next several weeks.

Of course, the wild hogs are also hitting our feeders and they’re a tremendous nuisance.  As a matter of fact, I just got through having a short meeting with a tenant farmer, and they’ve had their first crop of rice and they have a couple fields of seed rice that they’re flushing to get second crop rice and the hogs are tearing them up every night.  We’re instituting some night vision hog hunting and they’re planning to use helicopters to try to control the populations.  With the dry ground we have in this part of Texas because of the drought, the hogs need to find that soft ground they can use their snout with and too often that soft ground is in a rice field.  We’ve tried as best we can to fence the hogs off from our feeders, so they’re giving the rice farmers quite a fit right now.  So the hogs are being very prolific as usual.  We’re using the helicopter hunts as a management tool -- we’re not offering helicopter hog hunting to guests right now.  Our tenant farmer pays for that to protect his rice crop from these marauding hogs.

In addition to setting out the corn feeders, we are doing some touch ups on our deer blinds.  Also in the areas that didn’t have a spring food plot planted, we’re going in and discing the ground to eliminate the weeds so when we come back with seed in October, we’ll have a good seed bed for our cool season grasses and winter forage.  We’re also doing some brush removal as needed around the Ranch.  All this activity is going on now so the deer will have a full forty or fifty days with no activity around the Ranch, except for doing something the deer are used to like moving a camera or filling a corn feeder.

You may wonder how these food plots will do if the drought continues and there is no moisture.  We’ve got a big advantage over the ranches in South Texas that depend on rainfall and stock tanks for water because we’ve drilled several water wells across the Ranch.  Also because we have the rice fields, there is abundant water for our deer and other wildlife on Blue Creek Whitetails Ranch.  We also have some spring food plot left, along with the protein supplements.

With all these preparations, we can wait until the first of November before we need to put the seed out.  If the seed bed is properly prepared, then all you have to do is go out with a seeder or a seed drill to get the food plots going.  We won’t need to disc the soil again and we won’t lose moisture by doing that.  The key is to have your beds prepared well before hunting season starts.

Also because we put up so much water for waterfowl, we’re going to have a lot of wet areas with natural vegetation that we plant for ducks and geese.  The deer also use these areas and benefit from them.  So even if the drought continues in Southeast Texas, we’ll be well-prepared to provide outstanding hunting experiences for both trophy deer and for waterfowl hunters.  Plus the migration forecasts for prairie ducks are showing that there will be plenty of ducks migrating south this fall.  With our wet areas on the Ranch, maintained by wells if necessary, there will be plenty of ideal habitat for those migrating ducks at Blue Creek Whitetails.  We’re actually using some well water to prepare for early teal season right now.

If you're interested in a trophy whitetail hunting experience within easy reach of a major city like Houston, TX, you owe it to yourself to talk to us.  Call us at 979-543-6525 today!