Herman Brune is a prolific writer for the Texas Fish and Game Magazine and the Vice President of Texas Sportsman’s Association. In this episode, learn about the optimal breeding dates and the opportunity that the Texas bucks sex life brings with Herman Brune. He talks about the perfect time to take those big bucks during the rut or as they call it the height of the rut. Herman also shares his radio show, News From The Camphouse where he dives into the hunting scene in Texas and issues that Texas is experiencing today.
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LISTEN TO THE PODCAST HERE:
Sex Life Of Texas Bucks – Herman Brune
We’re heading down to Texas. We’re going to connect with a good friend of mine from Columbus, Texas, Herman Brune. Herman is a prolific writer for the Texas Fish & Game Magazine. He’s also the Vice President of the Texas Sportsman Association. He’s been a guide and a hunter. He did a lot of hunting up in Wyoming. He’s an all-around cowboy of the highest order.
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I’m here down in Shreveport, Louisiana at POMA 2017. I met a gentleman in Texas named Herman Brune and he’s going to talk about Texas optimal breeding dates. Herman, welcome to the show.
Thanks for having me, Bruce. I’m an outdoor writer in Columbus, Texas. I have a radio program down there on KULM 98.3. I’m also a wilderness hunting guide. I’ve hunted for years up in Montana and Wyoming. During my time as an outdoor writer, I’ve had various editors asked me questions. They asked me to do feature articles and one of them was on the rut. I was asked to do an article about rut in Texas. What were the biologist predictions for the rut? Did the previous year’s predictions follow through? I looked into it. I called our whitetail manager at Texas Parks and Wildlife, he was also our leader. He told me there was no information on the rut. For Texas, that would be incredible because they have a facility down in Hunt, Texas where they study all this stuff all the time. I was fuddled with his answer that they don’t have opened material on the rut.
He said, “Herman, I’ve got mountains of data on optimum breeding dates.” I said, “Let’s talk about optimal breeding dates.” He told me, “It’s all done by a number of daylight hours. If you breed any animal, you know that the breeding seasons were all according to daylight hours. It’s the same thing with deer.” We’ve got ten regions in Texas and he was able to tell me the exact date in each region that optimum breeding dates began. Prior to that date, 10% of the does would already have bred. Starting on that date, the next 80% of the does would be bred and they would be bred in 7 to 10 days.
After that, the remaining 10% of the does get bred after that 7 to 10 days. That is when, especially if you hunt in South Texas, you’ll see 2, 3, 4 bucks chasing one doe. That’s when rattling horns work the best. That’s when all the little tricks work the best. We always call that the hat of the rut. It’s the tail end of the optimum breeding dates. It’s when the last 10% of the does we’re getting bred in South Texas. That’s when the biggest bucks were getting shot. During that time that the 80% are getting bread, that’s when the bucks and that those, they all go to the shrub and you don’t see them.
What I tried to do as a hunting guide in Montana and Wyoming, I tried to apply that same type of thinking to elk. It’s been an ongoing conundrum for me because elk are more of a herd animal than whitetail deer. I look at it and if I know all the elk calves are born in a two-week period and I know what the gestation time is for elk, then I should know the two weeks that the elk are doing all their breeding. Right after that two weeks, you’re going to have the tail end of the cows. It’s the same way. That’s when the bulls go wild. That’s when you see these young bulls trying to sneak these cows away from the older bulls. I tried to apply the same logic to elk that we use on these whitetails down there.
The breeding seasons for any kinds of animals are all according to daylight hours. Share on XIt’s a little bit tougher but it’s fun to play with it. If you’re a hunter and an outdoorsman, you always think of every angle. You try to figure out what’s going on. You try to understand what the animals are doing. It’s fun information to have in your game bag when you go out in the woods. If you look at Texas Parks and Wildlife and you’re a whitetail hunter in Texas, on their website, you can find the optimum breeding dates in Texas for each region and when those dates start in your region. It’s is all on the internet. It’s at Texas Parks and Wildlife. You can find all this information. It’s something fun to have and fun to know and tickle your brain with and aggravate yourself.
What’s your radio show?
It’s News from The Camp House. In my radio program, we’ll talk about this stuff too. My radio program was born talking about water issues. Water is a big issue in Texas. In ‘99, we had Buster Brown passed Senate Bill 1 and it laid out the infrastructure for how water would be managed in Texas. It includes groundwater and surface water. They wanted everybody to have a groundwater conservation district and to have a place at the table for wanting to manage water in Texas. In order to do that, everybody had to vote on a groundwater district in their particular counties. A lot of your counties have conservative and rural folks and they do not want more government. That’s what they saw it as. They saw it as more government. It was hard getting these groundwater districts passed but as we heard if you don’t have a place to table, you’re going to be on the menu.
That’s a true statement. You better have a seat on the table no matter what you want to do with conservation. Forget about crying over your deer farm with the boys. You need a seat on the table.
There were two issues. The water issues were one of the issues that were big when I first started my radio show back in 2000. The other one was antler restrictions in Texas. We live in an area where we’ve got a thirteen-inch antler restriction. What that means is that trophy bucks in our part of the world have to have at least a thirteen-inch inside spread before you can shoot them. It causes people to have to stop and look at deer and not to shoot the first thing with horns. It benefited our whitetail deer herd in our area. It has also benefited the next generation of hunters. We got kids out there. Old people have a problem with new rules, those kids don’t have a problem at all. They walk out there, sit there and they can do it better than we can here.
Thanks for that. Share a little bit about POMA. We are at POMA 2017. We’ve got a couple of minutes talking about POMA 2017 and why did you come to POMA?
Every once in a while, we have to do something to revitalize and regenerate ourselves. It’s something to get the excitement going again. If you sit at the house or in one place too long, you get stale. We come up here and we’re with likeminded people. We’re with people who are involved in conservation, outdoors, wildlife and all the outdoor issues. We want to see things done correctly. We want the North American model of conservation out there for everybody to understand and know about it. When we come here, we get around each other and we hear new ideas. We hear how other people are doing it and it revitalizes us this to go back out there and talk to our readers, listeners and talk to all the folks. It’s also trying to connect with mainstream people and help them to understand how the outdoors affects everybody.
I appreciate that and on behalf of Herman Brune from Columbus, Texas, it’s been great visiting with you at POMA 2017.
Thank you.
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Thanks for reading. Before we go, can I take a moment and say thank you? When we started the Whitetail Rendezvous podcast journey, we had no idea what to expect. After years, we received a ton of feedback from over 400,000 listeners and climbing 500,000. Speaking of which, we are now closing in on over 600 featured guests. Thank you. A quick shout out to all those who have left an iTunes review and your feedback. I get those and appreciate it and it’s awesome to see what you have to say. We do read every single one of them. I want you to know that I am incredibly grateful for your kind words regarding the show.
If you don't have a place to table, you're going to be on the menu. Share on XAll the ratings and reviews help us attract more listeners. If you’re one of those new listeners, welcome, it’s great to have you. By the way, if you haven’t taken the time to rate and review our show and like the Hunting on Private Land Strategy on how to get permission to hunt private property go to WhitetailRendezvous.com as a special gift for rating and reviewing our show. When you get there, look for the start button to get the details. I’ll share with you the top techniques from some of the top hunters in the country on how they get permission to hunt on private land. I’ll share with you the exact techniques they use to get permission as my way of saying thanks for rating and reviewing this show on iTunes. Join us next time. Remember, we’re all on this journey together, learning, sharing, and becoming 365 hunters.
Important Links:
- Texas Fish & Game Magazine
- Texas Sportsman Association
- KULM 98.3
- Texas Parks and Wildlife
- Adam Lewis – next episode
- Sound Barriers
- iTunes – Whitetail Rendezvous Podcast on iTunes