The Banks Farm Way
By Lindsay Thomas Jr.
It might take you two or three tries to get Jeff Banks on the phone these days, and when you do he’ll have you on one ear, someone else on the other ear, and he’ll be walking to get somewhere. Yet, you will have an actual conversation with him — he’ll remember you, and he’ll make you feel like you were his most important phone call that day. Jeff is not a trained biologist or a deer researcher. He is a hunter who pulled the quality of his deer hunting up by its own bootstraps to the highest levels of achievement in private-land management, and his techniques are now sought after by hunters from all over the country. Lucky for all of us, Jeff is generous with what he has learned, even going out of his way to share knowledge with hunters who aren’t dialing his phone number.
“I call it spreading the gospel on growing deer,” said Jeff. “I know what it’s like to sit on the other side of the fence and spend 10 to 12 years to figure out what my deer really need, and if I can save someone else some time, then they can share it with somebody else. It’s not that complicated. QDM is real, there’s no hype to it, and you can make a real difference in a short time if you do it right.”
The Banks family now owns or has hunting access on 3,000 acres in the Piedmont of middle Georgia. The serious deer managment program that Jeff and his family and close friends started in 1990 has been a success by any measure, but the hard work and devotion of everyone who hunts on the Banks Farm paid an outstanding dividend in the fall of 2001. On opening day of the modern firearms season that year, Jeff killed the buck that had shown up several times on trail-camera photos and had come to be known as the “Horn Donkey” — a breath-taking 16-pointer that grossed 197 Boone & Crockett points and netted in record-book territory at 172 3/8. Jeff’s Boone & Crockett gave him the hook on which he could hang his efforts to spread the word about QDM.
Since the Horn Donkey went on the wall at the Banks Farm cabin, those efforts have kept Jeff traveling all over the Southeast and the nation. He has spoken to hunters at QDMA short-courses, deer-hunting expos, trade shows, and hunting clubs, and in June of 2004 he’ll be one of the featured speakers at the fourth annual QDMA National Convention in Grand Rapids, Michigan (As a QDMA Life Member, Jeff is one of the organization’s most enthusiastic spokesmen, and he has personally recruited hundreds of new members). To spread the gospel to even more hunters, in 2002 Jeff teamed up with outdoor writer Duncan Dobie, author of Georgia’s Greatest Whitetails, to produce a book detailing the Banks Farm program, Producing Power Bucks the Banks Farm Way. There’s also a website, www.banksfarm.com.
To recognize the success of the Banks Farm program and Jeff’s willingness to teach other hunters how he got where he is, the QDMA named Jeff the 2002 Al Brothers Deer Manager of the Year. Also, in Progressive Farmer’s Rural Sportsman Wildlife Stewardship Farm Awards, the Banks Farm won 2003 Farm of the Year in the Big Game category.
Fire and Lead
The Banks Farm program is finely-tuned as a result of more than a decade of development through trial-and-error, and their “puzzle” has become more complex with each stage in its evolution. However, Jeff often tells hunters who want to start their own QDM program to begin with the same basic and inexpensive management tools he started with: fire and lead. Burn woods to improve the habitat, and shoot does to reduce the deer population and its impact on the habitat. Prescribed fire should be used only with the guidance of state foresters and only under optimum conditions, but it is a cheap, simple and quick method of improving native browse for deer. Heavy doe harvest may also not be what every program needs, but it is another simple and cheap implement, and it went hand-in-hand with burning at the Banks Farm.
“We harvested between 100 and 150 does on our farm each year for 10 years straight, because it took that to reduce the deer herd to have better habitat,” said Jeff. “They’ve got to have quality browse out in the woods. That’s as critical as any food plot.”
Harvesting does is still a critical tool for Jeff and his hunters — bow season in September and October is the first opportunity, but then hunting becomes buck-only when firearms season and the peak of the rut arrive in late October and early November.
“Once gun season arrives, we try to keep the farm quiet except for trophy bucks,” said Jeff, “but then after Thanksgiving we hide hunt.”
Jeff said a common question put to him by audience members is, “How many does do I shoot?”
“There’s no magic number for any one property,” he said. “The main thing is to get the population balanced with the habitat as soon as possible. When your group is out there hunting and comparing what you’ve seen, you’ve got your finger on the pulse, you just need to discuss what you’ve observed. You have to become the hands-on team of biologists.”
Passing Young Bucks
Jeff recalls a morning hunt in 1986 when he passed up two different 4-pointers that came along. At the time he had been hearing and reading a lot about the new and spreading philosophy called Quality Deer Management, and the decision to pass those two bucks was a milestone he will always remember. A few more seasons passed before Jeff had convinced everyone hunting the Banks Farm to do the same, but by 1990, if you killed a buck on the Banks Farm, you sent it to the taxidermist. In 1994, several quality bucks were taken, including a 12-pointer killed by Jeff that grossed 161 B&C. Jeff’s team of friends and family members saw the results of their restraint and were eager to go further.
Not every group of hunters will so easily agree on goals and rules, as the Banks Farm hunters have. Although Jeff said that some of his hunters took longer than others to become full supporters of the new program, he has never had to ask someone to leave because of a disagreement over rules. Mistakes will be made in any management program, but if a hunter is out of sync with the group, they should be encouraged to find a place to hunt where they will be happier, Jeff said. Passing young bucks is the most simple and most widely understood concept of QDM, but every hunter in a given management program must be willing to show restraint for the group effort to be effective. Even so, Jeff believes in the importance of youth involvement at the Banks Farm, and there is flexibility in the group’s harvest restrictions when it comes to a kid’s first buck.
Year-Round Food Plots
Having visited with hunters from all over the country, Jeff believes that the two main mistakes that QDM programs are making is not shooting enough does and not knowing what to plant in their food plots or when to plant it. Many hunters plant fall food plots during hunting season, but fewer worry about what’s available in those plots in late winter, spring, and summer.
Jeff admits he’s obsessed with the idea of offering the highest-protein foods he can produce for the deer on the Banks Farm.
“If you increase the available protein, antler size goes up automatically,” Jeff said. “It’s not if you’re going to kill a big deer. If you get the protein to them, it’s a matter of when.”
The food-plot program at the Banks Farm is a year-round project and the result of years of experimentation with different crops. A combination of alfalfa, ladino clover, and Yuchi arrowleaf clover ensure that high-protein browse is available from January until May, when natural food sources are at an ebb, and when does are pregnant and bucks are preparing to grow antlers. In May, iron clay peas are planted to cover another “protein gap,” as Jeff calls it, in mid- to late summer.
In addition to food plots, the Banks Farm hunters offer a supplemental deer feed that rates 15 to 16 percent protein. They put it out in trough feeders from January through August — hunting over or near bait is illegal in Georgia, and the feeders are taken up before bow season approaches in September.
Mineral Supplements
After deer season and through spring and summer, Jeff keeps numerous mineral stations charged, about one per 150 acres. Early on, he discovered a commercial mineral mix intended for hogs that was high in calcium and phosphorous, and the sites where he put it out were used heavily by deer. When he couldn’t find any more of that product, Jeff went to a friend at a local feed-and-seed supplier and asked him to custom mix bags of minerals based on Jeff’s specifications.
Again, Jeff believes in providing the protein and minerals at crucial times of the year — when fawns are developing and being nursed by does and when bucks are drawing on the nutrient supplies in their own bodies to produce antlers. The results of the overall program are clear — from 1990 to 2000, the average weight of a doe killed on the Banks Farm has increased from 110 pounds to 140. Where mature bucks weighed 180 to 185 pounds, a mature buck now will top 200.
The Final Piece of the Puzzle
When Jeff invited well-known deer consultant Dr. Grant Woods to the Banks Farm, he asked Grant to tell him what else he could do to improve his program. Grant suggested that Jeff and his hunters look at harvesting select bucks that did not appear to have the most potential. Even with Grant’s go-ahead, the Banks Farm hunters approached the idea of “management bucks” cautiously.
“We weren’t as comfortable about management bucks as we were about the other aspects of our program that we had put in place,” said Jeff. “We didn’t want to open up a can of worms if this was going to be just an excuse to shoot something. But we started looking and talking about it among ourselves, and video cameras helped a lot. Cameras are so cheap now — that’s your hands-on biology right there. We would get together and watch the videos and look closely at our bucks. A 3 1/2-year-old 10-pointer that scores 135? He needs some time. Then we see a 200-lb. 8-pointer that looks like he’s at least 4 1/2 — that’s a good one for one of the kids or a guest to take. But we’re into fine-tuning now. This step should come after everything else is in place in your program.”
Small Properties
Though Jeff has 3,000 acres to work with, he is convinced that QDM works on small properties. One of his hunting partners, Bill Young, manages a separate property that is just over 100 acres and has been successful in producing quality bucks. For managers of small properties, Jeff said, building relationships with neighbors is a critical goal.
“If at all possible, try to share what you are doing with your neighbors,” said Jeff. “Put on a cookout, let everybody meet, and tell them what you’re doing. Not everybody is going to agree, but once they start seeing the light on at your cooler, seeing you skinning deer and seeing a couple of bucks, it begins to grow on them. That’s leading by example. It can be contagious.”
Teamwork
When Jeff Banks killed his B&C buck on October 27, 2001, he radioed his partners and asked them to head his way. He didn’t move or touch the buck until everyone had gathered at the spot and could celebrate and share the moment equally as a group, together. All of their efforts and restraint had gone into this achievement.
None of the accomplishments that the Banks Farm can list would have been possible without having a close-knit group of hunters who are committed to QDM, Jeff said.
“I believe that there are two keys to keeping everyone in a group like ours happy and motivated, and the first is honesty,” said Jeff. “We’re going to make mistakes. If you make a mistake, load him up and come in. You’re going to get ribbed, but it’s not the end of the world.
“The other thing is that the rules apply to everyone, and that includes me. You have to lead by example.”
In talking about the Banks Farm’s success with interested hunters, Jeff preaches patience.
“We didn’t do it all in one year,” he said. “If you’re starting out, be patient. Try to set yourself some goals, and don’t give up — I assure you if we did it, anybody can do it. We are proof that with QDM, a group of average guys and their families and their kids can put something real special together.”