Whitetail Playbook Episode One: The Whitetails Spring
Many items can be crossed off or your whitetail-to-do list during the hot Summer months? Just about everything if you plan accordingly! The anticipation of working on your Fall dreams during the Summer, and coming up with a whitetail playbook for fall relys solely on your ability to complete a large number of projects during one single trips to the whitetail woods and keep a goal in mind the entire year .
Posted by Hunting on Friday, June 5, 2020
With spring turkey season wrapping up across most of the country, a sudden shift to whitetails becomes the topic of conversation with most hunters. Food plot maintenance of perennials and planning for annual fall food plots are the main focus of conversation at deer camp.
Since bucks start to develop their antlers in April and more noticeably in May, proper nutrition is essential at the very beginning in the spring of each year. If you want your whitetail population to have heavier bodies and bigger antlers, you should make sure you do your part to develop perennial food plots that provide immediate green-up nutrition like clover, alfalfa, and chicory, which in the spring of the year can carry up to 35% protein. Some of the ingredients needed to push or delay a buck’s potential to the next level are:
- Nutrition
- Age
- Genetics
- Hormones
- Injury and disease
In the spring you usually are just seeing the skeleton of the whitetail woods. This is good; it helps you see the full picture and predict what is most likely going to happen based upon rotating food sources. Having a detailed aerial map can lead you to draw conclusions, by finding old patterns/signs, and potentially figuring out that you may be in the wrong place at the wrong time, which wastes valuable hunts. The Whitetail Playbook will be your guide to solving and anticipating whitetail shifts.
When you gather your playbook pieces in the spring, you are seeing a full season of activity, the full whitetail map. You have ALL the valuable information and can make better decisions about tree stand, trail camera placements and access to and from stands, as well as what you should do based on the full layout. By having a whole season of data beaten into the ground in the spring, and with a little detective work, you can come up with some good ideas about what the whitetails will do, where you should put your stand, and therefore be ahead of the curve instead of behind it and ready for opening day. Seeing the big picture will give you the confidence in your decisions on stand placement and food plot locations, and way less wondering about where are all the deer with a little guidance from The Hunting Pages Whitetail Playbook.
