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Ideas For Late Doe Season

SWBUCKHNTR

SWBUCKHNTR

Member
Well I was thinking while sitting out in the stand this year. The late doe season must be doing a pretty good job at cutting down the doe numbers because I could not find a doe if my life depended on it. Also it must be doing a great job at cutting down on the mature bucks that have shed out early in the last few years, because once again it is very hard to find one of them. So here are my suggestions get rid of the rifles. Honestly late season does being shot at outrageous distances, while running, or being pushed around. There is not a chance that you can tell if it is a doe or a shed buck. Make it a late doe season bow only. Therefore you have to do a little scouting find where they are eating and sit and watch them come by being able to tell if they are a shed buck or a doe or a button buck. I am not saying that bow hunters are more sporty or anything just that it makes you watch what you are shooting. I just think that the doe numbers have really decreased in the last few years but yet the number of doe tags allowed have not gone down much at all. Please give your ideas I want to see how everybody else feels about this.
 
My opinion on it is..it is destroy the deer herd in Iowa.I wish they would stop that season totally.It wouldn't be as bad if they just let the ones that have unfilled shotgun season tags left fill those with only does but they get thousands of dollars from selling more tags.And if there are tags for sale people will buy them.
 
I have for several years expressed my dislike of using rifles for deer hunting partly because I live in the effected tiers of counties, and partly because I contend that we are killing too many does already. I found an interesting bit of information on the IDNR site. On the harvest by county page it shows that there have already been 37 shed bucks reported along with the 12,704 does and 13890 antlered bucks. So far there have only been bow hunters and early ML hunters reporting. Some have said that there were reporting errors or that these bucks must be inferior if they have shed so soon. I certainly don't know but that is what the info shows. Our deer harvest has fallen very drastically since 2005 with 211,000 deer harvested to 2008 with only 142,000 harvested and over 60 percent of those were does. Another interesting bit is that there were 406,000 licenses issued, the highest in history. So if the number of licenses keep going up and the harvest keeps going down, and there is less and less habitat, what happens to our deer hunting 5 years from now?:(
 
I bought a couple of licenses today at the court house and was talking with the ladies there about doe license not selling as fast this year. They said the DNR changed the purchase date for the late doe season, they are not available until Dec.15th this year. That may cut down on the number of hunters in some counties.

On the shed buck harvest to date, if a buck is stressed from an injury like a vehicle collision or arrow or bullet wound they will lose their antlers early. I shot a buck during 1st shotgun one year that had been wounded early muzzleloader season. When he hit the ground both antlers fell off. Also our group shot two young bucks that had broken off both sides during the Nov. antlerless season on year. The regs don't tell you how to report a deer in that instance, I called one in as an antlered buck, the guy that shot the other one reported it as a shed buck. He was afraid if he called it in as an antlered buck the DNR would come question him.

One of the moderators posted info from the DNR last year on their goals for Iowa's deer herd and if I recall they still plan on cutting the population by close to half. Personally I think the best years of deer hunting may be behind us.
 
I believe deer hunting will continue to get worse as long as the mass slaughter of does goes on.
As far as shooting shed or broken antler bucks.I feel anyone that can't tell the difference in a buck and a doe besides by antlers is an idiot.The body type and color should be enough to tell the difference.But most don't care...if it don't have antlers it legal to shoot.
 
It just depends on your area. If you're seeing a lot more does than bucks, you need to take out some does. A balanced ratio of bucks to does is what is ideal.
 
I seriously doubt a balanced buck/does ratio in feasable in a "state".It is only possible on a controled property.
How does it improve the buck/doe ratio on a property when you go out and shoot 10 antlerless deer in bow season..Probably 3 or 4 of those will be buttin bucks.Then a couple hunters each take a buck off the same property with bows.Then in the shotgun season a group of 10 hunters all fill out with bucks.That is 13 or 14 bucks taken and 6 does.Then in the late antlerless season,20 more deer are taken off the property and 6 of those are button bucks and say 3 are shed antler bucks.Now there has been 23 bucks and 17 does.
There has been about 150 antlerless deer posted on the running count on here.I wonder how many were actually button bucks.20%? 30%? Not many will even admit to shooting a button buck but I promise you a lot of those are.
Its only common sense that the more does killed this year means less 3 1/2 year old bucks in 4 years.
 
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