Originally Posted by CNC


“Messaging” goes a long ways…..especially when its coming from state biologists. I think all the messaging that went along with the two a day rule change on does was probably more impactful than the rule itself. That was part of my thinking with the changes I suggested in the season dates concerning doe harvesting. A slight change in the structure to go along with some new messaging that “Hey, there’s a lot of places where you might want to think about not shooting any does for a few years. Coyotes + Humans is more impactful on population growth than we thought”.

Not to spoil the survey thread but if you notice the vast majority of the people killed 1 or 0 does last year. That’s kinda ugly when thinking about what would have to be done in that kind of situation in order to create any change from what we have now. That essentially is saying that if you want to see population growth then for a lot of areas that is going to mean shooting virtually zero does.

Yotes are playing a much larger role today in moderating population growth than they were 20-30 years ago. The combination of humans and coyotes is likely keeping there from being any growth ever occurring in many areas. There’s only maintain……slow decline…..maintain…….slow decline…..maintain………A lot of places could use some “growth” thrown back in the mix. I guess you could say that density dependent factors are not playing a role in controlling populations. That’s certainly not everywhere but the places with "burgeoning" herds are the exception and not the rule


This idea of some places struggling with population growth was also part of my thinking with putting in the “No does until Nov 1” part……I know some folks probably don’t understand that one……

You’re going to have folks who are going to say……”Ive seen plenty of fawns make it after being orphaned, its not that big of a deal.”……..Well, you could be right in that 8 out of 10 will make it……which also means we’ve lost 20%.......There’s a good portion of this state where fawns don’t drop until late Aug and are only 6-8 weeks old when the season starts…….There’s also a lot of fawns that are born to late bred does all across the state on a second or even third cycle…..probably even more so with an over harvesting of bucks……..

If we agree that we need to pull back the reigns on doe harvesting then let this be one of the places where we take an inch…..There's nothing that says we have to implement doe days in the exact same way as we traditionally did.......This is just another form of it...…Maybe that saves us 5 or 10% on fawn recruitment…….Lord knows with the coyote situation we have now those fawns need all the help they can get.


Last edited by CNC; 07/09/23 08:05 PM.
We dont rent pigs