Those jokers know better than to get caught on that land. Things in that part of the country are a lot different than they are in the east. They do occasionally fly that country, but they are usually smart enough not to enter upon private property unless they are called to do so.
Those are Rio Grandes. This pasture is about 3 miles east and west and two miles north and south, and there are, as far as I could figure, 3 big flocks of those birds hangin out there. There is a creek on the west end that wraps around the north side too, and those birds range off the creek bottom back up onto that high country. There is another smaller flock that ranges on the west side of the creek but they dont seem to cross over all that much. Sure is interesting watching those wild flocks of turks and the herds of deer and seeing how they function.
I was scouting early Friday morning last week and came out on the end of a real tall bluff, to the fence between me and a neighbor that I do not hunt on. (We also lease that land, but the family that we lease it from have 3 boys and that is the only land that they have to hunt on.) Down below, at about 600 yards were 8 bucks in a herd, that is unusual in itself at this time of the year. I put the glasses on them and watched them and they were being bossed around by a smaller buck with his right antler broken off. There was a group of about five or six does and this small one horned buck was keeping those other bucks away from those does, and they were minding him. It was surprising to me that, that little bugger was the alpha buck. There were a couple bucks in that bunch that were much larger than he was. He was a little Napoleon--small person complex.
That is the same buck that I mentioned in another thread that I shot over about an hour later, a half a mile on down the creek on other land that we lease, and the same one I killed just before dark that night. At least, now, those other larger bucks are going to put some DNA into those does and hopefully, we will have them all pregnant.
About a half hour before I saw these bucks, I had seen a herd of 14 does with 4 spring fawns. There were obviously ten does that had not had young ones. That tells me that in that area, there is another alpha buck that is very old, probably nocturnal, as no one has seen him, and is sterile. I did notice on Saturday a fresh rub, some buck had chosen an ash tree about 5 inches in diameter and had compeletely peeled the bark off of it about three and a half feet high. That wasnt any freakin little 3x3, howver, none of the ranch hands have seen a buck like that during the daytime.
Whitetail bucks begin going sterile at about 7 years of age, are unable to impregnate does, but can whip the younger bucks and prevent them from breeding. That is why we strive to identify and remove the alpha buck each year. It keeps the genetics strong.
