I’ve been very fortunate to hunt one 1,100-acre ranch in Osage County for more than 20 years now. I rarely hunt it that I don’t see several deer each day. Some years the ranch seems to be covered with rubs and scrapes. Other years I’m hard pressed to find more than a few scrapes on the whole ranch. But the deer population seems to be about the same either way.

Sign can show you there are deer around, but it may not be the best tool for evaluating habitat or hunting potential.

THE HUMAN FACTOR
Looking at the availability food and cover and water in order to evaluate deer habitat can help you pick a good hunting spot, but as most wildlife biologists will confirm, managing deer populations is largely a matter of managing people.

That is, people who use the land for hunting, for farming, for ranching or for other purposes play just as big a factor as the “natural” components of the property. If a property is hunted aggressively by lots of hunters who shoot lots of deer, or if the neighboring properties are hunted that way, then the potential for seeing lots of mature bucks is probably pretty slim.

If a landowner dumps too many cattle, sheep, goats, horses and/or other livestock on the property, then it won’t be long until the quality of the deer habitat is seriously degraded.

If a landowner kills all the trees on his property to improve his pastures for grazing, the deer that once inhabited the property may move elsewhere. Having some open ground is desirable; it makes for quality deer habitat. But deer need cover and browse plants as well, so at least some wooded areas are necessary.

At the risk of repeating clichés, I must echo what biologists often tell us -- that deer prosper where there are lots of edges. Many species of wildlife are like that. They do best in habitat that includes a little woods, a little grass, a little water and a lot of edges between those things.

THE BOTTOM LINE
So what’s the point of all this information on deer habitat? It’s that choosing a place to hunt deer should probably be based on the property’s potential to attract, hold and nurture deer, not just to produce a trophy. If you have deer around, trophy bucks will be produced by a combination of food, genetics and hunters allowing the deer to grow old enough to sprout mature racks. No, not every buck will grow an impressive set of antlers, even if it lives to old age. But the more bucks you have around -- until you overtax the habitat -- the more likely you are to grow a genuine wall-hanger for the den.

The Wildlife Department last winter proposed creating a trophy-management zone in a substantial portion of southwestern Oklahoma, but hunters who attended the public meetings where new hunting rules were discussed largely rejected that proposal because it would have included more restrictive harvest regulations in that area.

What’s a trophy anyway? I still look back at the first deer I killed with a bow and arrow in the 1970s. I consider it a trophy, even though its puny little 6-point, basket-shaped rack probably wouldn’t come close to meeting the minimums for any trophy-scoring system. I’ve killed several high-scoring bucks since then, but none of those have been as satisfying or as exciting for me as that first archery kill.

After all: A trophy is more than just a set of big antlers.