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Deer Science

Wild Pig Fertility Crushes Deer. Learn 5 Ways to Use It Against Them.

Mar 29, 2023 Lindsay Thomas Jr.

There’s a grim joke circulating among wildlife biologists who fought wild pigs and lost: “The average sow gives birth to eight piglets, and nine of them will survive.” Plug this fatalistic humor into a mathematical…

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Deer Science

Why Do Squirrels Gnaw on Shed Antlers?

Mar 22, 2023 Karli Gill

If every buck in your woods and fields drops their antlers every winter, why isn’t the landscape littered with them? Why haven’t you walked a few steps into the trees and found not only this…

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Habitat

The Benefits of Growing-Season Burns With Luke Resop of Mississippi State University

Mar 22, 2023 NDA Staff

In this episode, we’re talking with Luke Resop of Mississippi State University about prescribed fire. More specifically, we’re discussing the pros and cons of growing season burns, as well as considerations and expectations for burning…

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Deer Science

3 Promising New Ways to Detect CWD, Dead Deer Not Required

Mar 15, 2023 Lindsay Thomas Jr.

Good news is scarce in the fight against chronic wasting disease, so I’m pleased that I have some to share. A series of new tools could give us the ability to detect CWD in deer…

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7 Steps to a Successful Cooperative

Mar 8, 2012 Donnie Wood

Gather a group of hunters who practice Quality Deer Management (QDM) and you’ll discover many similarities. All of us strive to harvest an appropriate number of antlerless deer when necessary and while not harvesting button bucks….

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Leading Other Hunters to QDM

Mar 8, 2012 Lindsay Thomas Jr.

One November, my brother, Rans, showed me a video clip he filmed while bowhunting a small, suburban tract in Georgia. The clip included several minutes of footage of a nice 9-pointer working a scrape and…

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What Are Hybrid Oaks?

Mar 8, 2012 Lindsay Thomas Jr.

In fall 2005, QDMA received a house-warming gift for our newly constructed National Headquarters in Georgia – four containerized hybrid oak seedlings from Charlie Morse of Morse Nurseries in Michigan. Charlie admitted he wasn’t sure…

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How to Build a Food Plot Browse Exclosure

Mar 8, 2012 Lindsay Thomas Jr.

Often, food-plot farmers complain about crop failure because nothing seemed to grow in the field they planted, especially in small plots. The plants germinated fine but never grew more than an inch or two. While…

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Can Ticks Affect Antler Development?

Mar 2, 2012 Joe Hamilton

Recently someone asked me if ticks had been known to affect antler development, and then I captured the pair of photos above on my trail-camera. That prompted me to give this question more thought. The…

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Detecting the Rut Peak

Mar 2, 2012 Kip Adams

Fetal aging sounds like a technique used by Ob/Gyn doctors and ultrasound technicians, but deer managers can learn a lot about the population they’re managing by taking some annual fetal measurements. Joe Hamilton, QDMA’s founder,…

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Finding Un-Pressured Deer

Mar 2, 2012 Kip Adams

Density, distribution and travel patterns are things we often seek to learn about deer, but researchers from Penn State University set out to learn the density, distribution and habitat use of deer hunters. They used…

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The Biology of Bachelor Groups

Mar 2, 2012 Matt Ross

If you are monitoring local whitetails during summer through the lenses of your binoculars, or through the lens of a trail-camera, you’ve probably seen what are known as “bachelor groups.” These are groups of bucks…

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