Outdoors With Mat Taylor
Antler restrictions to be enforced

Former Soil Conservation Service employee and longtime writer Mat Taylor offers his outdoors column for Dispatch Record readers. He can be contacted at (254) 518-2262 or via email at mntaylor@agristar.net.

It's difficult to believe, but the fall deer and turkey season is almost here. The white-tailed deer and Rio Grande turkey archery season opens in 11 days on Sept. 29. The archery season closes on Oct. 2. There is also a special youth-only deer and turkey weekend Oct. 27-28.

The regular gun hunting season opens with a bang Nov. 3 and runs for two months until Jan. 6, 2008, in Lampasas and surrounding counties. Hunters are reminded that this is the second year for antler restrictions in Lampasas, Coryell, Hamilton and Bell counties.

The adjoining counties of Burnet and San Saba are not included in the antler restrictions.

To refresh everyone's memory, a legal buck is one with an inside antler spread of 13 inches or more, or a buck with one unbranched antler. Hunters may take two bucks, but the second must be a spike or have one unbranched antler.

With the antler restrictions in place, and with good range conditions due to above-average rains this spring and summer, 2007 is projected to be an excellent year for antler growth.

A word to the wise: I have heard that antler restrictions will be strictly enforced this hunting season, so don't shoot that small, young buck. A seasoned hunter once told me the best way to kill a large buck is not to shoot a small one.

I set up my deer feeders over the Labor Day weekend and filled them with corn. It took only two days for the deer to find the feed. Several bucks have been feeding there, and although the deer seem to be young, they all have good antlers.

One buck in particular has a high and very wide set, but the antlers lack mass, and he seems to be only 2 1/2 years old. He is a legal buck, but I hope he makes it through the season, as he has the potential to grow a trophy set of antlers in several years.

I recently purchased a digital trail camera, which I will set up at one of my feeders. The photos should tell me how many are coming to the feeder and their condition.

Texas Parks and Wildlife personnel recently conducted spotlight deer surveys in the Hill Country. TPWD wildlife biologist for Burnet County Trey Carpenter, Llano County wildlife technician Dale Schmidt, and wildlife biologist for Lampasas, Bell and Coryell counties Derrick Wolters spent many nights conducting deer counts in Burnet, Llano and Lampasas counties.

I accompanied them on a 15- mile line along county roads northeast of Lampasas. There is another line west of the city. To conduct the survey, one person drives a pickup while two others sit in the truck bed with highintensity spotlights.

Landowners along the line are notified prior to the survey, so they won't be alarmed and notify the game warden if they see the spotlights.

The surveys have gone hightech. When a deer is spotted, the person in the pickup bed uses a rangefinder with a compass. He then gives a distance reading and a compass reading to the driver, who inputs the data into a GPS unit.

We saw a large number of deer, including one large trophy buck, but I will not reveal where he was located.

Wolters said surveys used to be performed on a county basis. Now they are conducted in what are called "white-tailed deer" compartments. There are 32 compartments in Texas, and most of Lampasas County is located in number 23, which also includes Coryell and portions of Bell, Mills and Hamilton counties. The surveys are conducted in compartments that have similar vegetative conditions.

When all the survey data has been downloaded, the computer will reveal several types of information, such the position of each deer or group of deer within the survey, along with deer density, and interpolates how many deer are in the area.

Hopefully, by the time the regular gun season opens, TPWD will release deer densities in the compartment, such as the estimated number per 1,000 acres. Harvest recommendations also will be given to landowners to suggest how many deer they should harvest.

In other hunting news, I do not have much to report on the dove season. There were a large number of doves, mostly whitewings, on our ranch but after the season opened, they seem to have disappeared.

I also have not heard much shooting in the surrounding area.

If you have a good dovehunting story, let me know.