Drought and Exotics

As we enter August the drought is taking its tole on the plants and animals. The White-tail Deer are starting to starve and many of our trees are looking badly. The Carolina Buckthorn are dying, Hackberry Trees are dropping leaves, and Texas Red Oak are turning red way too early.



Yesterday Sherry took this picture of an Axis Deer buck in our front yard. Later in the day while I was taking a load of water down to some trees we planted I encountered over 100 Axis Deer in a herd that crossed the ranch road in front of me. The herd of exotics from India were composed of mostly females, many fawns and about 15 bucks - a couple of the bucks were getting close to the trophy size with antlers reaching a lenght of over 30 inches. The Axis will browse and eat grass unlike the White-tailed Deer that need to browse. With no forbs and few trees having leaves they can reach, the White-tailed Deer are in serious shape and even if we did get rain, it would not help much as we are out of the growing season.

The Axis are nomadic and travel in large to medium size herds. The Hill County is overrun with exotic animals, the Axis probably being the most numerous.