Look I am not a biologist. I am an accountant, and this to me is a math problem. Yes I have to many members, I get that. I want to lower it, but until I hold the lease I am not sure I can do that.

So back to the math. The game laws are liberal for doe kills, and restrictive for buck kills. That is restricted further by the timber company, in that we have a 6pt or better rule. What I am saying is, over time, we are killing more doe's than bucks. The negative impact of that is you don't see bucks chasing doe's. You see more bucks on camera's then doe's, but since most of the bucks are nocturnal, and buried up in pine thickets during the day, it's not easy to kill a mature one. Which means what? We are basically a buck factory.

A doe has a 50-50 chance of having a doe fawn verus a buck fawn. If I kill 5 doe's, then I have to have at least 10 remaining to be bred to replace the 5 that were killed. But if I kill 5 doe's and have 10 that are bred, I get basically 5 doe's and 5 more bucks. If we only kill 2 or 3 bucks, that my doe number stays the same, and my buck number increases.

A solution is to stop killing doe's and let the population rebalance. Another solution, which is what I am suggesting is to take some of the immature bucks out of the loop on top of not killing doe's. How long has the doe limit been 1 or 2 a day? At least 10 years right? Just basic math would tend to indicate as the doe herd is killed off, it is replaced by less doe's. If you can only kill 3 bucks, and in my case, its 6pt or better, no one has tagged out on bucks in a club I have been in. Not saying it doesn't happen, but I am saying I have not seen it.

So what I am asserting is the game laws have severly decreased the states doe herd, while increasing the buck herd. I don't need 30 bucks to breed 30 doe's. I probably don't need 5. Killing to many bucks will fix itself. They will come off of other properties because there are doe's.

Here is an example. Assuming a 1 to 1 ratio of bucks and doe's. At 30 deer per sq mile, I have 49 deer on my lease. If I kill 10 doe's and 5 bucks, I have killed 49% of the doe's and 20% of the bucks. All remaining doe's are bred and have twins, one of each sex. So I started before the seaon with 25 doe's and 25 bucks. After the season and deer are bred, I have 29 doe's and 34 bucks. At end of first season, I had 15 doe's left and 20 bucks. Assume same kill ratio the second season, and at the end I have 19 doe's and 29 bucks. So I started with 25 each, and after 2 years of 10 and 5 kills doe's to Buck's, I have 19 doe's and 29 bucks. So 10 more bucks than doe's.

The ratio will eventually get to an even larger spread between the number of bucks to doe's. If the mature bucks push off the immature ones, then my total population decreases.

The only way to correct it is to 1. Stop killing doe's for a few years and kill bucks only, or 2. which I think would work faster, is to kill some immature bucks and leave the doe's alone.