Chris Ginn Creative Outdoors

At least the deer on my property seem to be mineral starved. Louisiana Sportsman editor Todd Masson and I have been moving forward with the two plots we featured in the article Postage Stamp Plots in the August issue.

After seeing the fruits of our labor last deer season through some tiny food plots, we’re continuing to educate ourselves on managing small properties for deer. And the one thing we’ve been amazed by so for this year is just how starved for minerals these deer seem to be.

I found the Black Magic gone from my stump which had obvious signs of use.

While looking into putting out mineral sites for whitetail deer, I learned that they are important for spring and summer. However, I didn’t get ours put out until the middle of August, and they just sat there for several weeks. I poured half a sack of Dicalcium Phosphate and half a sack of loose red trace mineral salt on stumps near each plot, but I guess the deer just needed some time to find these stumps.

The deer obviously found my mineral stump about three weeks ago. I found my stump bare and nearly licked clean. A friend of mine told me he had some success with the Deer Cane Black Magic, so I bought two bags and poured one on my stump on Saturday, September 19.

Masson’s mineral stump was still undiscovered, so we dumped a whole sack of loose red trace minerals on a shorter and more decayed stump close to his original site on the same day. What I found this past Thursday after work surprised us both.

Masson's mineral stump looks like it has turned into a deer lollipop.

Every bit of the Black Magic was gone on my stump, and there were obvious signs that the deer had started to gnaw the edges of the stump and paw up the ground around it. What was more surprising was that the deer not only found Masson’s brand new mineral stump, they also found his original stump which now looks like it has become a deer lollipop.

I can’t say that all Washington Parish deer are mineral starved, but the deer on my property have responded very well to these two sites. I finally moved our Moultrie cameras off the corn and on the minerals today, so we should get a good look at just what kind of deer have been hitting these sites.

Here in Washington Parish, I’m going to guess some spindly-racked three-point bucks, a few gangly does and maybe even a spotted fawn or two. The good thing about these mineral stumps, though, is that they can help these deer turn from spindly and gangly to symmetrical and gorgeous.

At least that’s what we’re hoping.