Originally Posted by Mbrock
Originally Posted by johndeere5036

Our land is just like yours. We have some decent bucks on camera nothing huge. The lease holder of the property told us to shoot some does but it’s kinda hard to shoot when just about every doe or every other doe has fawns with them. Then we see a few small racked bucks in the afternoons but every year it’s the same way. We will see two year old and occasional 3 year old bucks in the food plots every single year. For all the bucks we let walk to get bigger where the hell do they go the next year.


Doesn’t matter if they have fawns. The fawns will be fine. That’s an emotional decision. Not a biological one.

A lot of those bucks aren’t getting bigger. They’re as big as they’re going to get. I met with a guy not long ago who had several hundred acres, bordered by a thousand acres, and between the two of them they didn’t kill more than a couple bucks a year. He asked me where all their young bucks were going. After looking at his trailcam pics he had quite a few 4,5,6 year old deer but didn’t recognize it because he was only looking at racks. There’s a whole lot of bucks around here that are never going to score more than 100-115”. 115-125” is where most of them will top out. The 130”+ is a rarity and only a small percentage will ever get there.

They also roam a long way at times. Deer die off the property and you never know it. Natural mortality is also higher in areas with a higher Buck density. Lot of factors at play.


I do think this happens a lot on properties where people are only trying to kill big/mature deer. I am as guilty as th next guy at letting one or two go that should have been shot that just didn't have enough head gear that was probably over 3-4 years old.

If you're gonna be stupid you better be tough.