Nature provides the Faith Ranch with
the ingredients to produce large white-tailed deer. Our primary
job is to conserve what nature has provided. We do that by
very conservative harvest practices: we DO NOT allow
immature bucks to be killed and we limit the number of each
buck class—gold, silver, and bronze—our hunters take. To paraphrase
a tired cliché, “we will harvest no buck before its time.”
Our secondary effort is to enhance the
quality of the white-tailed deer at the Faith Ranch. Not
only has the knowledge we have gained from the years of
white-tailed deer research on the Faith Ranch helped us
understand what ingredients produce large white-tailed bucks,
but we are also plugged into the latest white-tailed deer
research as a result of our association with the Caesar Kleberg
Wildlife Research Institute. In1997 the Faith Ranch began
an intensive management program under high fence using protein
feed, extensive water development, grass management, and intensive
harvest management. We are confident that the benefits of
sustained nutrition and intensive management will improve
the quality of Faith Ranch whitetails even beyond the level
that nature provides. The Faith Ranch now has over 9,000
acres of its 40,000 total acres under intensive high-fence
management.
--Stuart W. Stedman
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