Mighty Deer Lick

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An eleven point buck is caught on remote camera licking a Mighty
Deer Lick Sweet Sugar Block in Menominee County, Michigan. Good
nutrition, found in products like the Mighty Deer Lick, can promote
good antler growth in deer.

Good Nutrients Encourage Antler Growth

As we enter the fall season, many hunters are busy stocking their bait piles with dreams of scoring a trophy buck - with a rack worthy of adding their name to the legendary pages of the Boone and Crockett Record Book. But while hunters may spend days sighting-in their rifle, building their blind and concocting their favorite gulyas recipes, they often don’t spend enough time on what counts the most – the bait pile itself.

Hunters tracking deer in farm country have a natural advantage over those hunting in the fringe areas of the white-tailed deer’s home range. According to DNR biologists and wildlife experts, agricultural land not only provides more food, it provides food with added nutrients which help inspire better health and antler growth in deer. But if your land lacks the proper nutrients, supplemental blocks like the Mighty Deer Lick are recommended.

“A lot of it does have to do with the soil type,” said Bill Rollo, a wildlife biologist with the DNR, whose fieldwork tends to focus on crop damage caused by deer. “Better soils, like you find in agricultural areas, provide better nutrients. When you get into sandy soils - well it’s basically the difference between a deer feeding on a maple sapling or corn. They prefer the corn and it does provide more benefit to them.”
Farmers for generations have supplemented their livestock feed with mineral blocks to enhance the health of their animals. As deer are ruminants - a cud chewing mammal with more than one stomach - with needs similar to that of cattle, sheep and goats, it makes sense that they would also benefit from supplemental mineral blocks.

Farmers use supplemental blocks not only because they provide nutrients, but they also keep the animals from ingesting too much dirt. If one stomach in a ruminant belly fills with dirt, the animal’s capacity for food diminishes according to a DNR report on the subject.

“Controlled experiments have shown that white-tailed deer utilize certain browse species more effectively when provided mineral salt blocks,” the report states. “The intake of the supplement increased browse consumption rates and improved rumen function, which led to less weight loss … A more general exposure to supplement blocks may lead to greater acceptance which could reduce starvation losses.”

It was the combination of a part time job at a feed mill and a timely question posed to a DNR wildlife biologist in 1974 - that led Ted and Steve Janke of Powers, Mich. to form in the first company to provide commercial feed for wild deer. Eventually the brothers would create the Mighty Deer Lick.

Today, hunters and wildlife spotters in North America, Europe and Scandinavia use Mighty Deer Lick blocks to attract deer, but also to help provide them with the nutrients they need to grow strong. Retailers ranging in size and scope from national Fleet Farm chains to Amasa’s Tall Pines Store sell the blocks.

“The year we first put it out, we had bucks that only had little nubs that were barely legal spike-horns after a year and a half,” said Ted Janke. “We noticed a big difference in our deer herd. I mean, we were getting six and eight point bucks with little basket racks by 1975.”

It all started in 1974 when Ted’s brother Steve bagged a trophy buck. It was 226 lbs dressed out. The neck measured 31 inches around. When the brothers brought the deer into the Stephenson DNR station, Ted was perplexed when a biologist determined the deer was seven-and-a-half years old.

“I asked the biologist why it didn’t have a bigger rack – it was only an 18-inch spread on the rack, Janke recalls. “The biologist told me that the minerals in the ground of northern Menominee County were not enough to help the buck develop a good-size rack of antlers.”

At that time, Ted was working part-time at the Nadeau Feed Mill and attending North Central School as a 9th-grader. As the biologist explained how minerals such as calcium and phosphorus could help increase antler growth, he thought of the feed the mill produced for farm animals.

“I was working part-time at the feed mill and we were selling dairy minerals and specialty feeds for horses, pigs, cows – and I was thinking that there may be some way that we could add those minerals into the feed we were putting out for the deer to increase antler growth,” Janke said.

Around the same time, Ted was tasked with a term paper assignment focused on interviewing a career professional. He found a book by Dr. Bob Jones in the Escanaba Library and interviewed him on the subject. That connection would prove valuable to the young Janke brother’s start-up feed company.

After producing feedbags for some time, the Janke brothers teamed up with Morton Salt to create the Mighty Deer Lick which is now distributed in apple-, sweet corn- and acorn-flavored blocks around the world. The blocks were developed under the professional guidance of Dr. Arie Hoogendoorn, Vice President of Scientific Affairs at Morton Salt and Dr. Bob Jones, a researcher with the University of Illinois who specializes in antler growth.

The apple-flavored blocks were created because deer often select apples when they browse. However the company developed additional flavors - adapting the Janke brothers’ “special brew” - for areas that don’t have a lot of apple orchards. In those areas, deer are more accustom to feeding on sweet corn and acorns.

“I was at a canning facility in Minnesota and they’ve got fields of alfalfa, beans and corn, but they had to regularly check the fence around their sweet corn because the deer were constantly trying to get at that sweet corn,” Janke said. “That’s where we came up with the idea for using the Jubilee sweet corn.”

Using entirely natural ingredients adds to the production cost, Janke notes, but pays off in the end.

“I remember when I first put out the acorn block, and I watched this squirrel sniff it out like a dog,” Janke said. “I couldn’t help but laugh when it started to franticly scratch the side of that block to try to get the acorns out of it.”

For more information you can click on “live Deer Cam” and see their product in action..