Part of the Problem or Part of the Solution ?

[THEBAD]

Ok, first know your audience so I understand this may be the wrong place to ask the question. But here it goes.....


As a group me and my partners control some ground and are shooting a very limited amount of does. Our reasoning is we like having all the deer to hunt. We do have enough habitat and enough food to hold the deer on our property and in fact I believe our property could hold more deer than what are currently there. Our property also happens to be one of those properties that the deer migrate too during the winter months so we are able to hold and feed many deer that normally don’t live on our property

Many of our neighboring farmers complain about too many deer and as a group they go out and shoot literally at least a 100 does each year from our neighborhood and surrounding areas.

To be honest one of our goals is to keep the deer herd at current levels, so we believe by not shooting a bunch of does we are making up for all the ones that are shot by the group that shoots many.

We in fact don’t even shoot many deer at all off of our properties, not that we couldn’t, it’s just that we are looking for that one good one, and we are trying to each only shoot one buck per year. We have seen what letting the deer get a few years older can accomplish.

So by providing the deer with a sanctuary and not shooting many does are we hurting the quality of our local resident deer herd ?

 

[Critter]

What's a guesstimate of your current ratio? (buck/doe) I hunted a large tract of property this past year that the owner manages for Trophy deer. He shoots EVERY doe that he has the opportunity to, regardless of when and where he's hunting. He too has the habitat and food to provide for more deer than he has, but I can tell you for certain that his efforts have proved to be very productive as far as mature bucks go. I'm not sure what the ratio is, but if I had to guess I'd say 3 or 4 bucks for every doe, and a large percentage of those bucks are mature. As I said before....he has accomplished some serious TSI and food-plot work on his ground in the past 5 years, and the results are astounding. If you'd of asked me 5 years ago wether or not too many doe's hurt the quality of the herd I would of said no, but after talking with some very educated and experienced hunters/owners over the past few years I would say yes. Too many doe's on any certain property, regardless of food or cover can put some serious stress on your buck population........there's only a certain amount of doe's that can be breed in a certain amount of time in regards to the amount of bucks you have. Extending your breeding season out into January does nothing good for your heard, including the fawns that are born late that have to try and play catch-up with the rest. JMO.....really depends on what your goals for your property are.

 

[dbltree]

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Too many doe's on any certain property, regardless of food or cover can put some serious stress on your buck population........ </div></div>

Criter hit the nail square on the head...I'm not for decimating the deer herd but too many does is just too stressful.

Quality of bucks in my area has went down as the deer herd has increased, so I have to agree with everything criter has already mentioned... /forum/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/smile.gif

 

[bowmaker]

I certainly am far from a deer biologist and while I can understand what Criter is saying I am not sure that I can agree. It would seem to me that having 3 or 4 bucks to every doe would be far more stressful to the bucks and especially to the mature bucks. It would be like walking into a bar with 2 good looking women that smell real nice and knowing that you will have to get into a fight with the other 10 guys in there with the same ideas that you have. The guys in their prime are going to kick butt on the young inexperienced guys but sooner or later they will have to start beating on each other with serious injury and or death as the end result even for the eventual winner. The same has to hold true for the mature bucks in a situation like you described. The young bucks will eventually be driven off the property( think about it would you keep going to the same bar or start going to the grocery store) and some of the mature bucks will also leave or die or be killed by hunters. I just can't see that situation being self sustaining on any large scale, be it a large property or a whole state. The other thing that would concern me is after a while and the does are few and far between where will the new generations come from and how large can they be. Even if the does all have twins and 40% are bucks and you shoot most of the other 60% does and many of the old bucks die off from several causes how can you maintain a hunt-able population for very long? I know that way back when as we were trying to grow the deer population, we protected the does instead of shooting every one we saw by issuing mostly bucks only tags in the lottery. We managed to grow mature deer with close to the same over all percentage of trophy bucks as today when view as a percent of the entire population. Why could protecting the does have been a good thing in the 60s, 70s, and even the 80s but a bad thing now as related to mature buck production?

Remember that the only reason that our prison population keeps growing is because more outsiders are being brought in, not because they are reproducing with in the fences. Again these are just my own limited thought and opinions, bur at least I like them.

 

[jclaws]

if they would shoot some of the people in prison it wouldnt be so overcrowded.instead we let them spend life in prison on our money.

 

[Liv4Rut]

I am with CRITR. I too have seen the effects of shooting tons and tons of does. It does work well.

 

[PaToIowa09]

In everything I have read on the subject, I was always under the assumption that the closer you are to a 1 to 1 ratio, the better the herd quality/trophy potential. I thought the method of thinking on this was better nutrition and survival due to less herd stress/competition for food, regardless of the food available.

Ditto on the jail thoughts JClaws.

Frankie

 

[DannyBoy]

You can shoot a large percentage of does and the population will rebound to where it was. My guess is that your deer population is being set by the animals, probably have a lot of emmigration, as to why your neighbors clean house year after year. Shoot the heck out of those does next year, you won't be disappointed.

CRITRGITR- I would have to say I agree with bowmaker that a high buck to doe ratio like that would be stressful. I think bucks will fight regardless, but I wonder how the population rebounds and maintains itself... Just out of curiosity, how long has your operation been running on that level?