A Good Result. Habitat and the abundance of it determine the carrying capacity of our landscape, and ultimately the number of game and nongame species we see each season. Simonson Photo.

By Nick Simonson

What does it take to raise a deer?  I mean, not really raise it, but to have it show up in front of a trail camera or stand on a regular basis from when it’s a fawn until it’s mature.  I pondered these thoughts from the blind this weekend, bow in hand watching two older does cautiously mill about the base of the elevated stand, before two younger fawns came in for some rough housing around the area. What did it take to get the two bigger deer to a year-and-a-half or, maybe in the case of the bigger one, two-and-a-half?  What was required just to get the two smaller whitetails through this past summer so that they could pretend battle each other in the makeshift stadium below me?

While food is obviously a requirement, it was tough to figure they didn’t have enough of that as the corn field to the east of the property was falling into the teeth of the machinery that fired up about the time I took to the stand.  Additionally, the soy and wheat fields to my south and north likely also sustained the animals through the summer.  In areas of farming, there’s no shortage of food for deer.  While the agricultural revolution has likely spurred the increase in deer herds over the last century due to that fact, the one point I kept coming back to was habitat.

In the end, I returned to the idea that, while food is good, habitat is what is required to raise a deer.  In the spot I borrowed from my brother for the weekend, and he from his wife’s family for his hunting for the past several seasons, above the tangle of willows, knotted boxelder trees and field grass that gave way to the small pocket sloughs that formed a natural funnel down from the hillside to the blind I was reminded of that fact.  Escape routes, thermal cover, obstructions to conceal and open areas with plenty of room for their dark eyes to observe and their rotating ears to hear as they moved about all were provided by the 80-acre parcel my sister-in-law’s father had set aside decades ago as the rest of the earth around it was tilled, save for the deep bowl to the west which formed the base of a Waterfowl Production Area where geese, swans and ducks swirled in the air above and on its surface.

There between the tilled black field, the beige matted surface of the recently harvested one, and the slightly blowing golden chaff of the one coming down, the tangle of trees and grasses, cattails and brush, shelterbelts and swampy ponds brought these deer together and held them as needed.  In the cold and snow of last year’s winter, the pines and the reeds likely provided shelter against the conditions.  In the spring, when the two rambunctious fawns were born, the grasses likely gave them concealment from predators. Even in the gray of the cloudy afternoon, as the victor of the mock fight slowly made its way from the stand, nibbling at the end of each willow branch, I figured the space likely provided a basic food source all year round, no matter the conditions, or what might be growing in the adjacent fields.

Habitat, food and likely a little luck is what it took to put those animals in front of me for a 45 minute up close observation of deer behavior which never gets old. In the future, that combination, with a heavy emphasis on the first factor, will likely be what sustains the opportunity to hunt and observe not only deer, but pheasants and geese and ducks, and other game along with songbirds, furbearers, and other creatures great and small.

If you have time this opening day of firearms deer season, and your knees, arms and pulse rate aren’t too affected by the deer you plan to put your tag on coming into view, think about what it took to create that opportunity.  Odds are you’ll come back to the same conclusion I did.  The safe spaces, tangled places, and home bases that deer need to survive are ultimately the thing to consider when listening for the sound of a twig crack or the sight of a gleaming rack coming into view…in our outdoors.