National Deer Association

The top conservation group focused on preserving North America's most beloved game species.

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Articles

Is There an Empty Space Between a Deer’s Lungs and Spine?

Aug 28, 2024 | deerassociation.com | Lindsay Thomas

Some deer hunters call it a “dead zone” or “dead space.” Some call it “no man’s land.” Most say it is an empty space located below the spine and above the lungs of a deer, and some talk about completely different locations. Is any of it real? No matter what you call this mysterious void or where you think it is, there’s an easy way to see the truth with your own eyes the next time you field-dress a deer.
12 Signs Deer Hunters Should Harvest More Does

Aug 21, 2024 | deerassociation.com | Lindsay Thomas

How many does should you harvest? Itâ€™s a perennial question for our organization and many deer hunters. Here are 12 signs to look for that indicate you need to take more than you have been. Managing deer populations for optimal health is about balance, as depicted in the scene above. If deer numbers are in balance with available forage and cover, or if available forage outweighs deer numbers, little or no doe harvest is necessary. But few hunters or deer populations are in that condition.
15 Trail-Camera Lessons Learned From Thousands of Unique Bucks

Aug 14, 2024 | deerassociation.com | Josh Honeycutt

Trail-cameras have been a big part of my life, even longer than my wife. You might say Iâ€™ve been married to the former for 20 years and the latter for nearly 10. And I love them both dearly. I started checking trail-cameras and clicking through photos in the mid-2000s. I was young, but I took to cameras like flies to a glue trap. By the 2010s, I was running 50-plus trail-cameras every season. Today, I canâ€™t even count the number of SD and cell cams deployed on the tracts I hunt.
Keep Food Plots Simple With These 6 Steps

Aug 7, 2024 | deerassociation.com | Brian Grossman

I’m not sure what it is about us hunters — or maybe just humans in general — that drives us to overcomplicate things. I see it in all aspects of life, whether it’s losing weight, saving money, or even just planting a food plot for deer. And I’m guilty of it myself. While I’m not here to discuss weight loss or finances, what I can do is clear up some of the mystery surrounding planting food plots. In fact, it’s really a straightforward process when you break it down into these six steps.
What We Know About a Strange Deer With Droopy Ears

Aug 7, 2024 | deerassociation.com | Lindsay Thomas

In November 2022, 14-year-old Cooper Courtright of Louisiana killed a 5Â˝-year-old buck whose ears were his most prominent and memorable feature. Both drooped to the sides of the buckâ€™s head as if they were pinned straight down. Cooperâ€™s dad Jess contacted the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, who shipped the buckâ€™s head immediately to the Southeastern Cooperative Wildlife Disease Study at the University of Georgia vet school.
North Carolina’s CWD News is Actually Good

Jul 22, 2024 | deerassociation.com | Lindsay Thomas

Learning about chronic wasting disease is a challenge. Even when we’re receiving accurate information, it can be misleading simply due to the complexity of this deer disease. Conveying new information in a brief headline can change the nature of the information and how we receive it, creating bad news out of good. I saw a recent example in this headline: “North Carolina finds 13 new CWD Cases.” That sounds bad, right?
These Warning Signs Could Predict EHD Outbreaks in Deer

Jul 16, 2024 | deerassociation.com | Lindsay Thomas

Hemorrhagic disease is a phantom enemy of deer. Known to hunters more commonly as EHD and bluetongue, this family of viruses strikes unpredictably and sporadically, hitting deer hard in some areas, lightly in others, or not at all. It often skips years or even decades before hitting the same area again. We know to look for it in late summer and early fall, ironically almost the same months as hurricane season, but we have no EHD radar that provides early warning or a likely landfall.
How Often Do Whitetails Give Birth to Triplet and Quadruplet Fawns, or More?

May 8, 2024 | deerassociation.com | Lindsay Thomas

A whitetail doe can give birth to one, two or three fawns each year, and that’s the limit for almost all of them. A very rare doe will bear quadruplet fawns. And rarest among the rare, making Boone & Crockett bucks look commonplace, are the documented cases of quintuplet whitetail pregnancies – five fawns. Here, in one bundle, is a look at the rules of whitetail reproduction and those who break them.
The Block System of Deer Management at Virginia's Fraley Farm

May 1, 2024 | deerassociation.com | Bruce Ingram

On August 9-12, the next NDA Deer Steward 2 course will be held, this time at the Fraley family farm and at the Preserve at Crooked Run in Botetourt County, Virginia. The approximately 10,000-acre contiguous tract was put together by Jerry Fraley who purchased steep, mountainous land once owned by a timber company. Jerryâ€™s nephew Jon Cooper currently manages the property. And the management plan there certainly could be considered a model one.
Missouri Shows Us How to Manage CWD in Deer for the Long Haul

Apr 22, 2024 | deerassociation.com | Lindsay Thomas

The Missouri Department of Conservation recently released its 2023-24 chronic wasting disease testing results, and the report contains good news and a lesson for deer hunters in other states: If the disease is discovered early, active management can keep infection rates low. That means productive deer populations and sustainable hunter harvest for the long haul.