Texas Qualifier: Big Woods Management and Prosperity

On the 7,500 acre Big Woods on the Trinity Hunting Resort (bigwoods.ws/bwhome.htm) in east Texas, Dr. Robert McFarlane has created his own personal outdoors sanctuary to fit his interests and passions. McFarlane, or Doc as he’s known, has a personality larger than his portly stature, and friends, paying guests and American Whitetail Authority competitors are all fair game when it comes to his wit and rough charm.

“I like to cut one from the herd and give him hell,” said Doc over dinner the first night. Monty Fletcher from Yazoo City, Miss., is apparently the sacrificial lamb among the AWA Whitetail Pro Series competitors. He’s had to bear the brunt of Doc’s humor with jokes pertaining to how things get done in Texas (which is the proper way, as Doc sees it) as opposed to how someone from Mississippi might do things (which would never be the correct way, according to the landowner).

While a person of a genteel nature might find the host of the Big Woods on the Trinity somewhat abrasive, to put it politely, AWA competitors at the Whitetail Pro Series presented by Keystone Sporting Arms’ Texas Qualifier are rolling with the punches and the give-and-take of jabs creates an entertaining hunt-camp atmosphere. If Doc’s demeanor in the lodge reflects his love of life and good times, the property he has shaped echoes his outdoor passions: deer, duck and hog hunting, as well as retriever training and conservation.

Bordering the Trinity River and with 1,500 acres of seasonal wetlands and the ability to flood both marshes and timber stands, Doc has created a waterfowler’s paradise. His love of retriever training dovetails with the duck hunting and he’s tailored the property for training and testing purposes, including the building of a technical pond and dog mounds from which handlers can keep sight on working canines (which also double as elevated sites for ground blinds or shooting boxes for deer hunters). The Big Woods on the Trinity routinely has local hunt tests and retriever trials on site and hosted the 2005 AKC Master National Test.

If you’re starting to think that the property is managed strictly for Doc’s love of waterfowling, you can rest assured that he has a dual, or even triple, management practice. The east Texas property, located less than two hours south of the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, supports unbelievable waterfowl and hog hunting in addition to phenomenal whitetail deer hunting. Doc also helped create the Trinity Basin Conservation Foundation (trinitybasin.org), a conservation organization which aims to clean up the Trinity River basin while simultaneously reducing habitat fragmentation, increasing wildlife travel corridors and returning the habitat to a more natural state.

The whitetail deer management plan at The Big Woods includes both buck and doe standards. As such it sports a nearly mind-boggling buck-to-doe ratio and has prime habitat with more than enough natural nutrients for whitetails.

“Our buck-doe ratio is up a little bit this year,” said Doc, the Harvard-educated cardiologist. “The last couple of years it’s been .8 or .9 to one, but this year we’re at about 1.2 to one.”

The nearly equal-sexed herd changes the dynamic for hunters on the Big Woods. Increased competition to breed does kicks rutting behavior in sooner for property deer and AWA competitors have witnessed bucks making rubs and scrapes, as well as fighting and following does during the first two days of scouting. It also means bucks will likely be moving more in search of does during competition days.

Because the Trinity River often floods the land, and at one time or another has coursed through various parts of the property, a natural checkerboard of fertile black soil mixed with lighter less-supportive ground occurs. That mixture of soils and climate supports a typical east Texas Post Oak Savannah habitat: mature hardwood stands mixed with grasslands.

The combination of oak stands, grasslands and river bottoms, as well as aquatic plants managed for duck hunting, provides a plethora of natural browse for whitetails. “We don’t use feeders for deer. All of our feeders are used for patterning hogs so we can better manage them,” said Doc. “Any feeder you see on the property during deer season is empty, and we don’t allow any hog hunting at that time so as to keep the woods a little more calm and quiet.”

While Doc admits that you’ll occasionally see a couple of does or a very young buck under a feeder, most of the deer focus on acorns and greenbrier. “Hogs come into the feeders, and hogs and deer don’t get along. The hogs will run the deer out of an area,” he said. “We have enough natural high-protein foods that we don’t really need to supplement with feeders.”

That high-protein diet combined with a doe-management program and minimum age and antler restrictions has produced not only an incredible buck-to-doe ratio but also quality animals. “We probably have not only the most deer but also the best deer in east Texas,” said Doc of his free-range property. Management practices stipulate that 8-point deer must be at least 2½ years old and 10-point or larger bucks must top 3½ years of age before harvesting. Hunters that fail to reach those minimums might experience the rough scrutiny of Doc in a most public fashion.

“We had a guy out here kill a 2½-year-old 10-pointer. I put a picture of him and the deer up on my website with a caption that read: ‘No we didn’t castrate this man, but that’s only because I didn’t have a knife,’” said Doc in his unabashedly politically incorrect fashion.

That uncompromising approach to both herd and habitat management has produced one of the most phenomenal hunting experiences in the Lone Star State—if not the country—and AWA competitors are taking notice of the benefits it has had on the quality of deer on the property.

Despite his role as sacrificial lamb to Doc’s musings, Monty Fletcher believes the Whitetail Pro Series Texas stop will set the highest standard. “I think we’re going to score more points at this qualifier than any other event has scored,” said the Mississippi hunter. “Someone could legitimately come in with five bucks in a single day.”