Noble Rancher Articles
Wildlife category

Hunting Season Begins With a Review of Safety

With hunting season here, this is a good time to review a few hunter safety tips to ensure everyone remains safe while preparing for the next hunting trip and when hunting. Unfortunately, people are injured every year in hunting-related activities. Accidental firearm discharge, falling from tree stands and a shooter misidentifying the target are the main causes of fatalities and injuries. As a certified hunter education instructor, I stress the following tips to students in hunting courses, regardless of age or experience.

Culling bucks

Is culling bucks a practical management practice in a wild, free-ranging deer population? Here’s some reasons why it may be a wasted effort.

Learn to Recognize Venomous Snakes

Of the 46 species of snakes native to Oklahoma, only seven are venomous to humans. If you learn to identify the seven venomous species, then you will recognize other Oklahoma snakes as not dangerous, even though you may not be able to identify the species.

The Eight Point Rule

The eight point rule is the primary harvest strategy of some managers trying to increase buck antler size. Managers using the eight point rule allow harvest of bucks with eight or more antler points while protecting bucks with fewer points. Although intentions are good, the eight point rule is minimally effective for protecting superior bucks. Many yearling bucks with superior genetics and good nutrition have eight or more points on their first set of antlers. Nearly all bucks with superior genetics and adequate nutrition have eight or more points when 2 years old. Bucks with inferior antler genetics may never have more than seven points, even when mature. So, the eight point rule basically gives little or no protection to the superior bucks while it protects and promotes the inferior ones.

What To Do About Deer and the Drought…

The drought we have been experiencing is of great concern to most land and resource managers. Wildlife species found in Noble’s Texas and Oklahoma service area have dealt with and survived drought before, and, as is often the case, the key to maintaining viable wildlife populations on any area is maintaining good habitat for the species of concern. As species requirements increase in variability, or when multiple species are involved, habitat diversity becomes increasingly important.

Fried Wild Duck Can Be Delicious

Some people are reluctant to hunt duck, or they try to give away their harvested ducks, because they think duck tastes bad. However, wild duck is like many meats: It can taste delicious when properly prepared, or it can taste terrible when poorly prepared. My approach to preparing a savory meal of fried duck is described here.

Proper Care of Venison is Necessary for Excellent-Quality Meat

All venison is not equal. Venison can be consistently excellent table fare, or, with poor handling and preparation, can be about the quality of a boot sole. Many people who do not like to eat venison had bad experiences with improperly handled or prepared meat. Many factors affect the quality of venison, including deer species, deer age, stress prior to harvest, field dressing, contamination of meat, cold storage temperature, excessive moisture during storage, aging of carcass, butchering and packaging.

Quail Management on Small Acreages

Deterioration and fragmentation of bobwhite habitat are the primary causes of the bobwhite decline throughout the United States. Fragmentation is the process in which habitat elimination separates or isolates remaining areas of habitat. Recent scientific information indicates quail populations may need enough contiguous habitat to support at least 800 quail to prevent localized extinction over the long term. The area required to support 800 quail probably ranges from 800 to 8,000 acres, depending upon the quality of the habitat.