For you guys shooting a bunch of does…..

What is the habitat surrounding your property like in comparison to yours?......Would you rate the surrounding property as more productive, less productive, or equal to the habitat on your hunting land? Do the neighbors shoot the same amount of does?

I’m wondering if folks who are shooting a doe for every 50-75 acres are replacing them annually by having doe groups from surrounding properties shift around a little within their home range that overlaps the neighbors properties. There’s a void to be filled in a better spot so the doe groups shifts to fill them….That changes depending on if you have neighbors shooting or not shooting a bunch of does though

I have 2 does in my yard...the number never goes up..or down...seems like..they have one baby make it..between them..an one of the does dies or moves off..there is no other habitat..besides subdivisions across the holler...thang is...i cant ever get a picture of what knocks them up...i aint seen a buck yet..of any kind..goin on 4 years.

Lot of old cut over

Lot of different timber varieties around here with me managing mine more for wildlife than others. I’m pretty sure the does here produce enough to overcome cause we don’t kill but 1-2 a year on around 400 acres of neighbors not sure outside of that what’s killed.

We've killed 3 mature does so far on 500 acres in South Pickens county the surrounding properties and farms don't shoot many and they are starting to talk about shooting a few more due to seeing too many, we are still seeing anywhere from 10-15 at a time in groups

What do you mean by "seeing too many"??

Some seeing big groups of 10-20 with 0 bucks and several doe groups of 8-10 biggest will be about 80lbs, which I don't think its too bad as long as there is plenty of food for them to eat

I would let the neighbors shoot them. You start shooting up a bunch on 500 acres and those bucks and does will become nocturnal pretty quick. I like shooting does early in bow season and the last week of the season

Ive worked my end off getting it to where i can see 12-15 in a field at a time. Id get pretty ill if somebody shot one of my nannies. Theres about a hundred spikes and four points running around here if a fella need some meat.

Responding to your second post: the deer im feeding and watching are healthy. They are somewhat spoiled i guess. Several big ole does, big as a two year old buck.

I’m with you I like to go see a dozen in a hunt but some people who hunt with me think they need to shoot a bunch.

Seein multiple every sit...it aint an easy thing to accomplish without the right ingredients...time,money,habitat...money an time..will create habitat

There is no reason in my opinion to shoot a bunch of does for “ management reasons”. I understand when they do it on those high fence place.

Hardwood river bottoms. Rolling hills. Mountains.

I dont see a pile of them every time, but a real high percentage. It has took alot of work and a good bit of money. I have more time to throw at it than most working people. I dont drink or smoke, i feed animals. Its not for everybody for sure, its not even possible for everyone because of the time, money, and even the equipment needed to make it happen. I dont kill alot of deer either. Me and the boy will kill a deer or two apiece and a turkey apiece. Our reward is mostly in the numbers and in the process or the journey i guess. I like watching stuff grow whether its green, furry, or feathered. Killing is only a small part of it.

I guess some people just have the itch to shoot some! They might donate them or just wanna brag. Who knows!

I figure this is the case alot of times. Its really none of my business. If they own or lease some land and they want to kill everything they see, so be it. Some folks have a big bloodlust. I understand that too.

Yes it’s about being out in The outdoors, and being thankful

We try to kill 5-6 deer a year for the freezer. But I space it out a doe at the house some on public one at the lease then any bucks we kill.

Y'all be hungry! Ain't got no grocery stores nearby?

They have to feed the family!

I like shooting deer and I like eating deer. I ain’t apologizing for chit.
I exercise great restraint on the few acres here at the house. Kinda got a one doe a year rule. Skip around. Will take a doe other places I hunt.
And I got friends whose property would have a real problem if they didn’t kill a trailer load every year. Maybe 2 trailer loads. And they kill the kind of bucks every year would be a lifetime buck for most of us.
I see too many folks making other folks feel bad about what they shoot. It’s worse on Facebook than it is here.
Some guys are tickled to take a doe and a basket rack buck every year. Let them enjoy their sport.

My family of 4 can go through 4 deer a year easy. I usually kill 1 on public land, 1-2 on the family farm, 1 on the small lease and 1 every other year on the big lease. We don’t shoot does on the big lease.

Me and my family would rather eat deer meat than anything else! We eat everything me and my daughter kills and normally every year we kill a really good buck each, but have several other places to kill them to so I don't have to kill alot on one spot.... Space it out and save some for later!

can't buy venison at the grocery store.

We eat about 3 a year

We are basically out from last year and bought a lot more beef then normal. 5 gets us by on cube, hamburger, stir fry and stew meat. I like one to do summer sausage jerky and specialty stuff from.

CNC, this has been derailed.

I help manage several properties that take what some consider to be too many deer. Yet, populations, for the most part, do not fluctuate highly from year to year. Most of these properties are more interested in maintaining a balanced sex ratio, fall somewhere between advanced stages of QDM and TDM, and several have had Wildlife/human conflicts in their past from farmers having documented crop damage. Habitats are generally in good to great condition with ample early succession and have potential to hold a lot of deer. Despite moderate doe harvests, none of them complain about seeing/killing deer and they ALL take very nice bucks annually.

Since this turned into something else I’ll play. 😁

We eat 5-7 deer a year in my family and we also donate a lot of deer to others who need the meat. It doesn’t go to waste. I certainly don’t struggle to kill deer anywhere I hunt. They’re thick as flies on crap. It’s that way nearly everywhere up here.

Brock you are just a bloodthirsty braggart with your wanton doe slaying.

Admit it

What does that make you then Reaper?

Learned from the best!

Still have a long way to go. Prove it this year

I’m managing client properties throughout the southeast and Midwest these days and we’re generally able to recruit well with aggressive habitat management. Replacing does in an area with a moderate to high population is easy, but when you get to areas with low populations, doe recruitment is a huge hurdle. It’s actually something that we evaluate prior to purchasing hunting properties. If we’re looking in an area with low deer numbers then the adjoining properties must be large and must be managed, otherwise we move on.

On most of our clients properties our consistent problem is not with does or poor doe management by neighbors, it’s buck management. I’m consistently reminded why people who can, high fence their properties.

We have just short of 400 acres and our goal is 20 does. We have a 2 buck limit per hunter with 4 hunters. We still have about 30 acres of open farm land and we put in summer crops so we manage year round. Our neighbors to the south and west (Florida boys) have 800 acres creek bottom and rolling hills with no open land except several green fields and they have adopted the 2 buck limit but do not shoot as many does as we do. My neighbor to the north has 100 acres creek bottom and shoots there limit of bucks but very few does. My neighbor to the east and north has 3-4K acres with several open fields but shoots very few does for that much land. Any of us can see 20-30 does on any set in the afternoon. We have great habitat on all of this property.

I moved to my farm 5 years ago. I've hunted it for 30+ years but it was never really all that much fun. You could hunt an entire season and never see a cracked buck except occasionally during rut. My adjoining properties are a mix of pine plantations and small family farms that consist of green fields and pines. 1/2 of my property lines anoint very well managed recreational properties that have been under the same ownership for 50+ yrs. Another 1/4 is road frontage and all that goes along with that in Walker county. The final 1/4 joins relatives land that gor as long as I can remember have killed every deer they saw with a horn on its head and to my knowledge, have never shot a doe.

Since moving here, we aggressively killed does for 3 yrs. Killed about 30. Last year we began seeing our mature buck population grow and this year it looks even better. I've hunted for the last 4 days and have seen deer every sit. Does and bucks, every sit.

Have around 400 acres I can hunt. We only kill 5 or 6 a year between me and my dad total. We don't have alot of deer but I usually see deer most sits. My dads land is 20 year old cutover. Most of it is surrounded by virgin hardwoods with little pressure nowadays. I see alot of the same deer till everything dies off and they start hitting our food plots pretty hard. I killed alot of deer when I was younger, 20 plus a year and I just like watching them more now than killing.

We like watching deer. We kill about 6-8 does/yr off 1750ac. I personally have not shot a doe off this property in 5 years. I like lots of does around when the rut starts, we usually pick up quite a few walk on bucks. Our surrounding properties are pine and cutovers, they shoot em when that starts, many ease over to our place where there’s not as much pressure and shooting action going on


Oddly, when I stopped shooting does, I started seeing and shooting more bucks. Personally For me, there has been a direct correlation. YMMV.

Hell, I would love to just see one!! My club doesn’t need to kill any, but they’re worse than children and can’t stand not to pull the trigger!! We don’t have the deer to justify killing a pile of does!

The adjoining land varies terribly where I hunt. Pine hills, river bottoms, LOTS of smz’s, and clearcuts.
No way to pin doe recruitment down to MY personal surroundings, other than the fact that a 3-4 yr old clear cut is a deer magnet “in general”. I love a new clearcut, they draw deer while a 20 yr old pine plantation generally is a desert in comparison. We killed 10-11 last year, I forget. I cleaned 6-7 of them and processed 3-4. I put up 3 whole deer just for jerky every year and usually kill 2-3 for other people.

Hey CNC what do you consider "a bunch of does"

Can't raise cattle and sell only bulls. Pasture would get small quick

It just depends.....I like the way we used to do it better where does were protected and people shots spikes instead…..If you shoot a spike then you’ve killed one deer…..if you shoot a doe then you kill her and every one she was gonna have.

Its not an apples to apples comparison......Deer have coyotes to deal with as predators for one....and 2) social dynamics amongst doe groups is gonna dictate to some degree their spacing and distribution. You may choose not to shoot them but that doesnt mean that they'll stockpile as a result

Yeah shooting 1 doe kills everyone she would have had

Farmers will kill them for you. When they shoot at night they shoot every set of eyes they see. Even big bucks. They gut shoot them so they run out of the field.

Do away with crop depredation permits and instead compensate the farmers for the lost $$ through the money raised by things like the DCNR’s “bait fee”……

Never happen

They do it elsewhere. Not everywhere. The bait fee would be a perfect use. Otherwise forget it...

We were the first in the county to start shooting them. DMP over 20+ years ago. Locals went crazy. We got threats. Fellow killed 130# doe Saturday. Also 2 120# + were killed.

TC, that’s big. How big do you think they’d be if you would kill more of them.

Very good idea. On my folks spot that I hunt. I have a camera next to a feeder. There is a doe on camera that had triplets last year and twins this year. Why would any one shoot a producer like this ole girl?

I thought the doe portion of the herd was healthy Chris.

Won’t be done. There’s been a legal precedent set years ago that farmers have the right to protect their crops. Depredation permits are just a way for WFF to try and keep track of it.

We usually kill 15-20 does off about 2000 acres. We have a healthy population with a fairly balanced buck:doe ratio and 15 or 20 seems to keep the population steady from year to year. I would say the habitat is a little above average, and most of the surrounding properties are similar. I do think that we plant better greenfields and more acreage than most of the neighbors so that probably helps with sightings.

I will say that we used to be on a QDM program that recommended shooting anywhere from 75 to 150 does most years. We killed some good bucks during those years but it got to where we rarely saw deer. After a couple years of that we cut back to where we are now and have seen the population grow without noticing any real negative impact on the quality of bucks we harvest.

150 does on 2,000 acres that is laying em down.

I’m not sure we ever reached that number but I know we killed 100 a few seasons

That’s ridiculous. Definitely not sustainable long term.

Agreed. Eventually we called it quits and just used some common sense with our doe harvest while still trying to only shoot mature bucks.

Lol,,, you wanna see folks cry kill bout 30 next to a club that has a membership fee of $5000 a year . We killed what ever came to the field .Next year the thinned the herd their way.

Biggest doe is 150#

We regularly kill 130-145 lb does and the biggest is 163.

Hunted Illinois two weeks ago, saw far less does there than I do here. I cant really explain it. The biggest doe group I saw was 3.

Hunted Illinois two weeks ago, saw far less does there than I do here. I cant really explain it. The biggest doe group I saw was 3.

Its really not as ridiculous as it may sound…..I’m very familiar with the area and have had other parcels that have had biologists tell them the same thing…..The caretaker for Enon told me a very similar number that they had recommended to be taken by the biologist…….And here’s the thing…..You could probably kill that many off of these properties if it weren’t for the hunting pressure it would create shutting them down eventually…..And why is the biologist telling them that? I’m guessing its so the habitat has some pressure taken off of it and so that the does will weigh 140 lbs like y’all are talking about instead of 80-100 like they do now……Meanwhile though the people who hunt these places are seeing 30, 40, 50 deer in an afternoon.....even 75 in an afternoon like doekiller mentioned... and still killing some golly whoppers here and there too like anywhere else…..


This is why I think while all well intentioned……a lot of this recommendation stuff is just a matter of opinions……There really is no one “right place” to manage….Why do these folks need to blast a bunch of does?.....So that the doe weights will increase?.....What does that get them? Seeing a whole lot less deer??? Meanwhile they’re just coming up with their own number anyways that they think is about right…..”Well the biologist said 100…..but we just shoot 20 instead……or 40……or whatever…….”…….I think most people would rather see 50 deer that weighed 80-100 lbs than 5-6 that weighed 140 if they had to choose between the two………There’s no right place to manage really though….its a sliding scale and its just a matter of opinion o….Some of the most coveted places to hunt though are where hunters are seeing 40-50+ in a sit……That is what brings some of the highest dollar lease prices….People don’t pay high lease prices for big does……I think we over prescribe a bunch of doe killing that isn’t necessary…….

That's live weight. Right ?

Quite sure it is live. We been managing or place for over 20 years and we get both live and dressed. Have the paperwork on every deer we've kill for the entire period.

I like to shoot 4-6 deer a year. Though some years I only shoot 2-4. Only one buck a year because I always save a tag for the monster that never shows. But one tract I hunt is 400 acres and between my friend, uncle, and cousin we take 4-5 does off a year and it has a healthy herd. The other is approx. 6000 acres and total doe kill a year has been 1-3 for the last 6-8 years and I kind of feel a little bad about killing 1-2 a year off of it myself (just a little). Then, I'll hunt some farms around city limits and pick up a couple more with my bow. Those populations need the pressure so I don't have any issue at all killing as many as I want off those farms.

OK , just a average healthy grown doe