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Tell me why we should shoot more does

Droptine1844

Droptine1844

Member
I’ve been thinking about doe harvest a lot recently. To me it’s not making sense shooting does for “management” I get if we were heavy CWD state in Iowa, but I feel Iowa does not need to be harvesting massive amounts of does. Especially late season. I hear all the time people saying “deer numbers are way too high” to whose standards? To me shooting a few does early in the bow season and early muzzy for personal use makes sense, I do it every year for my own meat needs. But I cant help but think anytime during or after the rut your killing a buck too. In Iowa I’d say it’s a fair guess a lot of does have twins. Statistically half of fawns are bucks, so every pregnant does is a dead buck… that is one less buck with a chance to mature. Throw in crazy bad EHD years like last, why are we still killing does that we have to donate for “management”?? My guess is it seems we’ve been told to good to kill does for the last 20 years so that’s what we do. But do we need to unlearn this? I’m not claiming to be an expert and not saying I’m right. I’m just questioning why and want to know what the answer is.
 
Needs to be unlearned. 20 years ago the deep population in Iowa was at all time highs, so it was needed in many places, not so much anymore. Now for the last 10 years "doe management" has been a trendy catch phrase on deer tv shows and youtube hunters. I usually get one or two in an urban program, very few have ever come from the private I hunt, never more than 1 a season from my statewide tag areas. And even the urban park I hunt doesnt need it.
 
Culling the deer herd charge was driven by the car insurance agencies and the Farm Bureau, IMO. Has your car insurance dropped after the massive herd correction? Seems the only people that benefited were farmers and insurance agencies. I'm opting out on the doe tags until I see damage to the habitat due to over browsing.
 
JNRBRONC said:
Culling the deer herd charge was driven by the car insurance agencies and the Farm Bureau, IMO. Has your car insurance dropped after the massive herd correction? Seems the only people that benefited were farmers and insurance agencies. I'm opting out on the doe tags until I see damage to the habitat due to over browsing.
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And in most cases the habitat could be improved to fix that as opposed to killing more deer
 
I think hunters have to take the bull by the horn here and use their own personal judgement. Each farm is different , but it blows my mind to see people talking as if Iowa’s deer herd is anywhere close to what it was 10 years ago. Outside a few “refuges” I would venture to say every county in Iowa has less deer in it than 10 years ago yet doe tags have done nothing but go up. People will continue to buy and buy and shoot and shoot, because it’s their right and it’s legal. I enjoy shooting one or two here and there but the last couple seasons EHD has convinced me to just buy ribeyes and burger. Hopefully something will change, but I don’t see it ever being what it once was.
 
This very thing has confounded me for a long time. I see practically every hunting show go out and shoot does claiming “management” yet not one has said how they came to the conclusion that does needed managed. To me, it’s nothing more than an excuse for guys that like shooting deer to go out and shoot deer. I watched a youtube vid last fall of a show I’ve evjoyed for half a decade or so. Hunter got out of his boat on public land claiming to do some doe management. My first thought was…you’re on public land…who said you should decide does need managed??? Him and another guy with him shot 3 deer that hunt. One doe, one button head, and one small buck. They killed 3 deer and only one was female. At the end of the video the guy was complaining that they didn’t see more deer. In that case I’m guessing doe management wasn’t really needed after all….and I don’t think it is the majority of places. Nothing more than an excuse to shoot deer.
 
I won't be harvesting any does this year unless I foresee running out of venison. I have the food and cover and my doe population seems pretty steady, I would assume the EHD and coyotes provide the necessary culling or the doe groups run other does off the property. Also not a good idea to estimate your doe numbers while sitting over standing grain in a polar vortex.
 
Since the "hunting industry" are a bunch of sellouts.. I wonder if any of them have been bought by special interest groups hellbent on reducing deer numbers?

Nah.. That would never happen.
 
Muddyrem said:
I think hunters have to take the bull by the horn here and use their own personal judgement. Each farm is different , but it blows my mind to see people talking as if Iowa’s deer herd is anywhere close to what it was 10 years ago. Outside a few “refuges” I would venture to say every county in Iowa has less deer in it than 10 years ago yet doe tags have done nothing but go up. People will continue to buy and buy and shoot and shoot, because it’s their right and it’s legal. I enjoy shooting one or two here and there but the last couple seasons EHD has convinced me to just buy ribeyes and burger. Hopefully something will change, but I don’t see it ever being what it once was.
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I agree. ^^ I can say though that while I see far fewer deer out and about as I travel to and from my farm, we still, until EHD hit us last summer, have too many in our area. I know that is difficult to comprehend for some that are seeing FAR fewer deer in their area of the state, but it is true.

Our area has pretty much ideal habitat, many LO's enhancing that habitat with food plots and TSI and judicious harvest of deer. Also, some people in the neighborhood don't shoot does in any quantity, so the population can boom really fast in that environment.

But last year, with EHD having taking a real toll, we didn't shoot any does. This year, we need to get back on it, probably at a level of "medium". Because however it happened...the deer population was way down say last October...but looking close to normal by this spring/summer.
 
We're a cwd section. Have had snipers working on our deer for 10 years. Some of my neighbors stopped shooting does. Other neighbors may take 1 or 2 a year. Based on crop damage alone, we seem to have too many deer again. But I know you can't just base it on my crop damage alone. Trail cams are showing poor fawn crop this year. We're also long overdue for another season of ehd... it's been 11 years since we had a bad outbreak. Lotta moving parts.
 
We also are in a CWD area and it’s terrible how low the numbers are- and what grinds my gears is the people not from the area that show up to hunt the antlerless season and then donate to hush I might shoot a doe this year just because we need meat, but it’s not high on my priority list.
I also have a neighbor who “wants all deer killed” and it’s like a zoo- he’s had problems farming the ridge so I’m hoping he sells soon and I can just buy it to add to mine.
 
Bassattackr said:
Since the "hunting industry" are a bunch of sellouts.. I wonder if any of them have been bought by special interest groups hellbent on reducing deer numbers?

Nah.. That would never happen.
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Great point and an interesting one. I’ve wondered the same for many years and been very vocal on this subject. Just seems insane to me that 90% of hunters in IA and IL will all agree (which doesn’t happen very often so think about that) the hunting was the best it’s ever been in that 2000-2011 range and yet none of them seem to want to manage the herd to mirror that magical decade. Makes no sense to me. Love the posts in this thread though, hopefully the pendulum will swing back the other way if enough hunters start promoting it.
 
Rous14 said:
Great point and an interesting one. I’ve wondered the same for many years and been very vocal on this subject. Just seems insane to me that 90% of hunters in IA and IL will all agree (which doesn’t happen very often so think about that) the hunting was the best it’s ever been in that 2000-2011 range and yet none of them seem to want to manage the herd to mirror that magical decade. Makes no sense to me. Love the posts in this thread though, hopefully the pendulum will swing back the other way if enough hunters start promoting it.
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Just spitballing here, but what makes 00-11 the best it's ever been? I'm wondering if there's a chance people just think it was, while in reality it really wasn't. It was before social media blew up. It was before trail cams blew up. People wanted attention for the big buck they shot. They probably scored and entered it, just to gain any notoriety. I could be totally off on this. Just always thinking about the differences, same as you. Awareness and attention were very different then vs now. I think we've discussed this a little in the past, but I just don't think the monster deer herds of yesteryear will ever come back. Literally something like probably 1% of the population wants to see 100 deer in 1 field. I wish IL would be a 1 buck state. It will never ever happen. Low deer herds are the wave of the future. Big bro will find a way to make it happen.
 
northcedar said:
Just spitballing here, but what makes 00-11 the best it's ever been? I'm wondering if there's a chance people just think it was, while in reality it really wasn't. It was before social media blew up. It was before trail cams blew up. People wanted attention for the big buck they shot. They probably scored and entered it, just to gain any notoriety. I could be totally off on this. Just always thinking about the differences, same as you. Awareness and attention were very different then vs now. I think we've discussed this a little in the past, but I just don't think the monster deer herds of yesteryear will ever come back. Literally something like probably 1% of the population wants to see 100 deer in 1 field. I wish IL would be a 1 buck state. It will never ever happen. Low deer herds are the wave of the future. Big bro will find a way to make it happen.
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I mean you talk to guys like most of the guys on this forum that are die hard big buck hunters I don’t think I’ve seen anyone debate or dispute this. The one guy on here (can’t recall his name or the podcasts name) literally talked about how he had like 5 or 6 different deer in the 200” range he was hunting back in the mid 2000’s whereas last year he didn’t have a single one. One guy, anecdotal I get it, but that same sentiment is shared by the vast majority of die hard guys I know. Look at Winkes old farm and he was killing mega giants in those years, then from 2012-whenever he sold it it just wasn’t holding the quality or qty of mega giants. I’ve seen stats from the IL deer classic (used to be a huge well attended show) and the # of BC bucks was on a steady decline from like 2010 on. A very large outfitter in IL had a year by year break down of # bc’s they were killing and same decline.
I’m with you though, I don’t think those level of deer herds are coming back and in many cases they were probably too high for all the different stake holders. My main contention is that most hunters don’t even realize the herd is down 25-40% and the few who do have been brain washed in to thinking it’s “better” this way for big bucks and there’s simply no evidence of that. Just the opposite in fact. Somewhere between where the herd was then and where it’s at now is probably the sweet spot for everyone involved and that’s definitely doable if hunters will reduce their doe harvest.
 
Im not sure what the situation in Iowa is like anymore as Ive not hunted out there since the hay day you speak of, but the Illinois farm I own still has stupid high deer numbers on it. I struggle to get a 15 acre soybean field to grow beans unless everything is perfect weather wise. The deer just destroy it so I wouldn't mind a few less deer.
Speaking of Bill Winke and his Iowa farm. He claims a lot of his success was from his focus on heavy doe harvest. Said it caused his farm to be a highly favored spot for young bucks to shift to.
 
Field of Dreams said:
Im not sure what the situation in Iowa is like anymore as Ive not hunted out there since the hay day you speak of, but the Illinois farm I own still has stupid high deer numbers on it. I struggle to get a 15 acre soybean field to grow beans unless everything is perfect weather wise. The deer just destroy it so I wouldn't mind a few less deer.
Speaking of Bill Winke and his Iowa farm. He claims a lot of his success was from his focus on heavy doe harvest. Said it caused his farm to be a highly favored spot for young bucks to shift to.
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What county in IL are you in? What I often wonder when I read guys saying they have really high deer numbers is if both things are true….meaning maybe you do have pretty high numbers but at the same time there was still 10-25% more deer on your farm in that decade. For example, I hear guys say what you are, I’ll hear “I saw 30 deer in my field last night!”. Ok, that may be “a lot” of deer to one person. But if in 2007 there was 20% more deer that same field had 36 deer in it. Psychologically 30 or 36 registers the exact same for most people- which is “a lot of deer!”. But you do that across the county level and it makes a big difference in terms of the number of 2, 3, and 4 yr old bucks that are able to slip through the cracks if that makes sense.
On Winke, I’ve communicated back and forth w him and we just don’t agree on this topic (and I respect the guy a ton). If less deer on his farm was better then he should’ve had better hunting from 2014-2018 and he didn’t….it was significantly noticeable how his quality was nowhere near as good as it was pre ehd when his deer numbers were way higher. His current farm also has way less deer and at least last year (we will see going forward) he didn’t have anything all that special on it.
Literally every metric I’ve ever seen along with what 90% of the die hard guys will tell you is that the hunting was by far the best during that 2000-2010 stretch and the deer #’s were the highest they’d ever been. So I just can’t understand how guys like Winke and tons of others try to overcomplicate that and try to suggest otherwise. The experiment has been done both ways now, and the evidence seems overwhelmingly conclusive to me.
 
I have to agree here, the lower deer numbers in the last 10 years seem to also correspond with less quality. Many of our IL neighbors feel this way too and all of us have about stopped shooting does.

Obviously a few get shot during gun season and kids have open game on any deer they want to shoot. However, I think we have taken less than 1 for off the farm per year the last 6-7 years. Neighbors same thing, and our herd is back up substantially and the quality of bucks has improved. We have had no issues getting on the big deer either so I am not sure I buy the buck to doe ratio and the high number of does making it more difficult to kill a mature buck.

We will keep pushing this until we see it not working
 
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