I say this as I'm sitting in a ladder with my son in the woods, looking at a very small food plot I've never seen a deer in. This is thinned about 4 years ago pines, and there are deer here, but there are no 100 yard shots to shoot, assuming we can even see the deer. It's thick.

I hunt in the woods alot. I'm not a shooting house hunter, although my back issues have slowed me down as far às going way off the beaten path. We can't do corn anymore, but I wasn't so keen on that anyway.

I have about 1 percent, maybe 2 of my lease planted. We limed after we soil tested. We don't kill 10 deer a year off 1000 acres. And the solution a biologist gives me is shoot 15 doe's the first year? Really?

I'm not knocking you, but we can't burn. We can't have 10 percent planted. We don't have a poweline, which is good, because it keeps trespassing down, but it's bad because that's a big open space I could plant. So we can't do the things that would really help grow a deer herd, but it's like the solutions I have been given are for places that are.

How many people want to pay $ and hunt for 3 or 4 years and never see or shoot a deer? That's what the doe a day limit has created.

What is it now CNC? I need to make a graph?

Is there any way to compare having a doe days season versus 1-2 does per day season long

I’d almost bet overall more does were killed under a short doe season.

Just like WI kills more in 9 days than any other state, including the 90 day guns season of the south. WI has more hunters in the woods opening gun deer season weekend than most others. It’s like a rite of passage.

Left axis population. Horizontal axis time. It represents the growth of deer and peak in certain areas of the 80-2000 era. The leveling off is what happens with all populations, with mild fluctuations, over time, once they reoccupy areas they haven’t for quite some time.

Just all the reasons that you keep coming up with to justify why today's hunter has to shoot a bunch of does so they can call it "managing deer"......


........and yes, a graph or two every now and again would be nice.

You point to ONE thread where I’ve said people must shoot a bunch of does. Please. I manage deer according to objectives. If their objectives call for that we make it happen. If it don’t then we don’t.

When you kill your does do you let the field fill up with deer waiting on a buck ?

Done it every way you can think of but most often we kill does early as possible off plots and then the pressure is off. Most of our plots get hunted 4-8 times a season. Killed as many as 5 in one sitting and still had to run deer off getting out. Killed multiple bucks within minutes of killing a doe, with her laying in the field. It’s because they are not pressured. Sitting a field 2-3 times a week KILLS plot observations even if you never pull the trigger. Or you can hunt it very sparingly and shoot every dang time time and it don’t hurt a thing.

Why do you assume we “peaked” in the 90’s from the standpoint of population???......All we did was reach a point where the size of the population became a major nuisance to other interests like Ag. That doesn’t mean Alabama’s carrying capacity was peaked nor did it define everything to come afterwards. That’s just silly to use that graph to try and define our deer herd’s history and future……..

And that's with gun ?

Not answering for MBrock but I have been on properties like this. Limit human intrusion into the deer's habitat and it works. Loud bangs don't frighten the deer as much as smelly hunters tromping through their homes every day.

He didn't like your dang graph. Take that!

Same here but if set up right you could hunt ever day.

Nearly all the does I killed here at home were killed of the same 30 square yards of dirt . I just don't let the field fill up with deer before I shot a doe

Some of the most consistently productive lands are low pressure and never hunted when conditions are not correct. That in itself limits the number of times hunted. Weeks can go by if the wind is not correct for the property.

I know another property that is crazy, the numbers of deer on the land and the quality is an abnormally. They used to feed heavily, probably some really great genetics and the land is in mostly ag with some crops left for the deer. That takes a ton of money to make that one work.

Both mentioned properties. Kill way more does than bucks as the bucks have to be of the older age classes.

Look its all a balancing act. How can I limit intrusion? Have less hunters. Guess what that means? I have to charge more. Which causes what? People hunt more to get their moneys worth.

How do I keep members when some never kill a deer, and never see one, which is what would happen if I let people kill doe's off green fields. I don't have groups of 8 to 10 doe's hitting a green field. I have small groups of 1 to 4. And usually a couple of those are unspotted fawns basically. 4 deer on a 1/3rd acre plot can keep it very short if they hit it every day. I have a couple like that. The same family group hits it every night. At least once. And then I have half acre plots of durana that aren't being mowed.

If I was seeing 6 to 8 doe's on some of the fields, then I would think we have a more sustainable population. Think in terms of round numbers. 10 members. Each wants to kill at least 1 deer. A buck is a bonus. That's 10 doe's. I need to have 20 left over that have twins and don't lose one to a yote or anything else in order to just maintain my population. If each member kills 2 doe's, then I need 40 left to replace my population. In a perfect world. There is no getting around the math.

Now I am toying with a theory that if I have better groceries than anyone else, I can pull deer off neighboring property. The problem there is I probably only have 10 acres of my 1050 planted in limed and fertilzed food sources. I don't have a way to lime the woods. My ph is 4.6 to 5. Adding fertilizer to those area's doesn't do alot. Reason I know, I planted 3 log decks left over from logging. Added lime and planted them. I have had to put a ton of fertilizer on them to get them to grow. Urea is $35 bucks a bag, so it adds up in a hurry. If I don't fertilze them, then they don't grow and turn yellow. Now next fall, it will be easier. But there is always the expense and low production when you add in new ground. It doesn't help the loggers scrape off the available topsoil either.

I have 3 spots I want to expand in the spring. But in order to do that, I need to deal with the stumps left over. That means I need a bull dozer or a stump grinder. One wouldn't take but about half a day, the other will probably take 3 days.

This same concept I described is what defines our rut as well. If you look on the map the state produced in that other thread.....that little green circle they have drawn in for Macon Co is actually not a circle (shocker I know ).....the true shape is defined by those highways in my diagram.

So let me preface this by saying that much of my opinion comes from having lived in one of the perimeter boxes for the last 16 years watching first hand what happens to doe groups on the boundary……….

But back to our model again……and for the sake of not having to remake it lets assume that enough properties are green (meaning exceeding doe carrying capacity) that we have expansion occurring for the whole subset, pushing outward and being controlled on the edges with road mortality……This is creating a constant recycling of doe lineage from within the subset area with little influence from outside of it.…..Again, the doe groups that exist around the edge start getting clipped off one by one if they try to have daily routines on both sides.

The estrous timing of the doe groups are running true to their original lineage…..These things only change through natural selection. Some of the does released in my area around where the green dot exists came from Clarke Co where the does have a peak estrous timing of Jan 20 - Feb 4……Other does from Sumpter Co with a little earlier peak estrous of Jan 7 – Jan 21 were released around Auburn……What we end up seeing today is how that all end up shaking out as the herds grew and filled in……The great, great, great, great granddaughter of the original stocking is still running true though if her lineage made it. This overlap of estrous dates is one of the things that creates more stress on bucks than just having a normal two week peak.

Now if you can imagine this like on the science channel where they are showing what a multiverse would look like with the whole state existing in a bunch of subset “bubbles” like this (from a female standpoint) with each individual subset going through phases of expanding and shrinking…….then you will see how our herd is evolving over time as a result. There are a number of possibilities that could be created by individual scenarios just depending on how you adjust the variables……

What keeps us held fairly stable currently is that we have increased doe harvest to the point where there is very little expansion occurring anywhere now. Have everyone stop shooting does in our sample area here and you’ll create it……Now, have everyone in the subset area to the north start whacking every doe out and you’ll start seeing more variance spill in from the south…….Let both bubbles stop shooting does and your mesh point becomes the highway with conformity in the center of the bubble and high variance on the edge. Habitat and population density of each area would also come into play. All of these different possibilities is what is defining how each little section of the state is evolving moving forward.

You would think that everything would eventually settle back out in a smooth natural north to south estrous timing but I think there are too many other variables influencing natural selection now for that to happen in the same manner it once did.

I've learned a lot from these many pages - mostly about humanity, but it's learning none the less.

Sorta like so.......minus the wormhole or whatever that is.... ....They would be more irregularly shaped blobs though on a 2D flat surface.