STEVE KNIGHTOutdoor Writer

Is it ever too early to talk about deer season? After all, it doesn’t start for another three months or so.

OK, that was a silly question. Deer hunters started looking toward the 2018-19 season the day after their last hunt last winter.

Hunters know the quality of an upcoming season is determined by what happens long before opening day. It is dependent on food availability in late winter to get deer through that stress period followed by high-quality forage in the spring to aid in antler development and doe health up to and after fawning.

The good news is portions of Texas actually had a little spring this year and fields turned flush with wildflowers and other forage for the deer. The bad news was that 100-degree temperatures did not wait for the actual beginning of summer to arrive, and in some portions a lack of rain has become a real issue. According to reports, some 79 percent of the state is said to be from abnormally dry to exceptional drought already.

That is not the case in much of East Texas where most counties have been extremely wet so far in 2018.

“Rain creates good deer habitat. It has been slightly wetter in the northern part of the district, to where their rainfall is a bit above average,” said John Silovsky, Texas Parks and Wildlife Department Wildlife district biologist for the Post Oak region.

With fawning season currently underway, Silovsky’s early prediction is deer numbers to be up from last year.

“We will start our survey work mid-July and will have a much better guess on what recruitment may look like at that time. We will also know the cards that Mother Nature has played and be better able to predict antler development,” the biologist said.

While rainfall has been down in the Pineywoods, the timing has been good, said district biologist Rusty Wood.

“Here in the Pineywoods, we are currently just under the average rainfall for the month of May as well as year-to-date totals. However, the rain we have had has been timely and the range has been in overall good condition,” Wood said.

Because the precipitation has come at the right time to produce forage, antler development got an early boost.

“Based on early reports, observations and the few trail cam pictures I have seen, antler development is off to a great start. Fawns are already hitting the ground and nutritional demands will only go up for does feeding young,” Wood said.

That is where the concern about the early hot, dry weather comes in. Does need high-protein forage to produce milk for their fawns and to recover from giving birth.

San Antonio is already in water restrictions, which does not bode well for portions of the Hill Country. But like in any other year in the Hill Country, one pasture could get rain while across the fence they did not. Still, antler quality will likely be down on ranches that are overpopulated with animals.

Conditions are a little better on the eastern range of the Hill Country.

“I am predicting a somewhat typical deer season for the far eastern portion of the Hill Country. Fall and winter environmental conditions were typical, and the feedback on deer harvest and physical conditions indicated healthy deer going into the winter,” said Mike Miller, district biologist for the Hill Country.

Places like Blanco and Hays counties were in better shape to start the year than McCullough, Mason and Gillespie counties. Whether range conditions throughout the summer will hold up well enough to support antler growth and fawn production depends on the heat and any future precipitation.

“We’ll have to see whether some of the hot, dry summer forecasts come true. Even in that case, we are not expecting conditions far from normal. My overall impression is that it should be a decent season,” Miller said.

Dry range conditions are also an issue across the Cross Timbers region.

“I am seeing lots of new fawns recently. Deer range is in decent shape, but deteriorating fast in places that have not experienced a thunderstorm in the last month,” said district biologist Kevin Mote.

Mote said rainfall across the district has been spotty with no pattern of where it falls. He said even the places that have gotten rain this month will need more before July.

Maybe more than anywhere else, deer herds in South Texas are immune to rainfall totals because they often provide rain-in-a-sack in the form of protein pellets. However, that is not the case on every ranch and, like other parts of the state, the Brush Country is feeling the impact of the lack of moisture.

“Habitat conditions in the spring were fair although a lengthy period of 100-plus degree temperatures in June has started to dry out the vegetation. A good mesquite bean crop is expected this summer as many trees are loaded with blooms and some have already produced beans, which are ripening and hitting the ground. Deer will readily utilize the beans to help meet nutritional demands this summer,” said Alan Cain, TPWD’s white tailed deer program leader.

Cain said the regions’ population has been slowly moving up in recent years. This season he is expecting hunters to see more 3 1/2-year-old deer and few 6 1/2 and older.

Range conditions were good enough in the early spring to give bucks a jumpstart, but the early arrival of summer could cause antler development to slow on less managed ranches.

Time will tell how good or bad the summer is on Texas’ deer, and fall really is not that far away.