The best opportunities for daylight counts are early morning and late evening, although casual observation is okay to report too. There's opportunities for you to report numbers whenever you're out on the ranch property and see deer.

Also, it's important to let others know when you're going to be doing a daylight count- if you've scheduled one- so they (and you) will not be counted over and messing up your counts. Jim is keeping track of all the scheduled counts, so be sure to keep him up to date on things. When a scheduled count is done early morning or early evening a specific route can followed. Following a route can be more fun, and this sometimes helps to avoid counting the same group of deer twice. Below is the route Jim usually follows when he's counted in the past:

-- from the campsite, head east down the hill through the main gate to the bottoms, and then continue down the north pasture road to the high water crossing area

--turn south at the high water crossing area (just prior to the woods) until you get to the south pasture road

-- then turn back west and go down the south pasture road

-- and then head back to the campsite

Record you numbers on a sheet of paper and report what you count to Jim. He'll add your numbers to all the other counts done that year. The below categories should be used to report on:

#'s of buck seen

#'s of doe seen

#'s of fawn seen

#'s of unidentified's seen

If you get an opportunity, count the numbers of points on the bucks you see. Counting and reporting points helps the Ranch determine how we're doing in terms of numbers of trophy bucks and cull bucks.

Towards the first part of September all the numbers will be turned in the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department for their computations of area harvest numbers. Daylight counts are usually begun around the middle part of July and last through the end of August. For accuracy purposes, an attempt is made to count in excess of 200 deer each summer.

 

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