Aggressive Doe Harvesting

Those of you that have done it. What benefits have you seen versus the consequences of really hammering the does? Reason I ask is that we are looking at turning up the heat on them and I want to hear what experiences y’all have had prior to doing so. We have a trend going to where it isn’t uncommon to see 10+ does per sit and maybe one or two bucks at best, and the same goes for our trail cams.

From what I've seen in the past by thinning out the does you will see better weights on the bucks and does also the heard will be healthier due to more available food and nutrients, more daylight buck sightings more intense rut I've seen as many as 5 mature bucks running one doe before, also I've noticed the bucks will have better horns on them from being able feed better from not having to compete with over population, the over populated places I've hunted does will be smaller in weights and the buck will also and they also have screwed up racks, just all depends on what you want

We are on a plan to harvest only 4+ yr old bucks and an aggressive doe harvest. Once we get the ratio in place, the plan is to ease off on the nannies a little bit still keep them in check. We are relatively new to this and are coming from the usual “point restriction” type club that rarely shot does.

Increased body weights, increased fawn recruitment, more intense rutting behavior and day light observations of bucks. That’s it wrapped up in one sentence.

Everything in moderation.

Don’t kill them all off one plot. Make reasonable decisions on the herd in small increments.

Before I started a mass doe harvesting, I’d want my overall group to determine our desired outcome for the management practices we choose. Honestly, this has to be crystal clear in the beginning.

Do you want to see deer every sit on the plots still? I personally like to see deer on the plots and being able to take kids or others to the plots to see the deer would be nice. Maybe let them shoot some does earlier in the season, but I wouldn’t want every mature doe going nocturnal from my plots due to pressure on the does. Especially before the rut.

Once you hit them hard back off an evaluate annually. Once the ratio is decent hit maintenance mode.

I feel like there has to be a balance somewhere. I was in a club here in Pickens county for several years before I moved here full time where they shot a lot of does. 30+ was the goal for 1150 acres. I had hunted an adjoining property years before, and recognized that some antlerless deer needed to be removed from the population. What ended up happening was that several of the guys would hunt for the entire week of muzzleloader week whacking does, so by opening day of rifle season, deer sightings were way down. Also the does started showing up later and later, leading to more buttons being killed for does. I feel like some of this was guys just wanting to shoot. I screwed up myself and killed a button one year because the president gave me a lecture on being too selective. Never killed a racked buck on the place either.

The property I have hunted for the last 10 years is about 300 acres. The most does I have ever killed off it is three in a year. I spread out my killing throughout the season to minimize the impact on deer sightings. It isn’t what the QDMA preaches or what I learned at AU for my degree, but it sure seems more fun.

Pro tip. Don’t shoot them off green fields

I would think it all depends on the habitat and availability of high quality food for the deer number one and also what your neighbors are doing. I had a place that was 800 acres in Dallas county of really just pines and cutover that was a true deer factory and the neighbor was a big landowner who had good habitat and they really didn’t kill many does so I/we killed 10-14 per year mostly with bows and never really on food plots. Now I’m in north east Alabama with lots of agricultural land and see good numbers of does at certain times but also have some neighbors that have small 5 or less acre lots that I feel kill to many does under the old excuse of feeding the family. I will say I know of several places that were great in the 80s and I’m talking about big bucks every year and they started hammering the does that it got so bad they let the land go. Every place is different in Alabama it seems. Just my thoughts

Never made any difference. We have the exact same size bucks and length and duration of rut now not hardly shooting any does as we did for a decade when we shot 20 or so every year. The only difference we noticed was we saw fewer deer when hunting whem we wacked the does

This is the truth, but nobody wants to hear it or believe it.

The entire SW 1/4 of the state did a “study” on this about 20-25 years ago. Most regret it.

I've heard that exact same statement from every hunter who smokes cigarettes and doesn't pay attention to scent control.

Good luck with whatever you try. I’ve hunted 2 places that tried this balance the bucks to doe ratio thingmajig. It didn’t go well. The rut was non existent for 2 years after reducing doe numbers. The bucks scored between 115 and 140 before and after. They didn’t magically put on 15 to 20 inches of antler because there were more acorns and briars to nibble on. The only thing I noticed is that there were a lot less deer. The bucks had no reason to be on the property during January. I think it worked out great for the neighboring properties during the rut.

This. We started managing 10+ years ago and I have hunted the property for 25+ years. For the first 15 years, hardly any does were taken and every buck with a spike on their head was shot. It was nothing to see 10-15 and even 20 does on every sit and you could hunt the entire season and see 2 or 3 bucks. Management started with biologist recommendation of taking 50 does the first year, which we came close to doing (it's a large piece of property). Then 35 the next year, 25 the year after that. We also put in a rule that bucks must be 4.5 years old to be taken. Was slow on buck harvest those first few years, but the long-term results have been WELL worth it. We now have a very well balanced heard, I see bucks nearly every time I hunt, and it is not unusual to see 4 or 5 bucks on a sit during the rut. During those first 15 years, I never saw a buck that was harvested that was over 175 lbs or over 125 inches. Now we kill bucks every year over 200 lbs and have killed 6 bucks over 140 inches in the last 6 years, with 2 of them over 150 inches. I used to think grunting and rattling from the stand was a waste of time, something you only saw work on some hunting video. Now I regularly call in bucks during the rut because we have a much higher number of bucks and the higher number causes much more intense competition for the does.

The formula is pretty simple: reduce the doe numbers and let the bucks walk until they are mature. Once you reach a more natural buck/doe ratio, cut the doe harvest down to a reasonable number to maintain the balance. Endure the low buck harvest for the first few years and then enjoy the fruits of your patience!

Precisely!! Some of the best hunting you’ll ever experience is on properties like this.

The unfortunate part lies with the fact that IMPROPER excessive doe harvest has been applied where it shouldn’t have been for far longer than it should have been, by unqualified folks to make those decisions. Then the results can and have been disastrous. I think that’s where a lot of the naysayers come from. Proper doe management, within reason, along with letting immature bucks walk does lead to far better hunting. I’ve seen it on way too many places. And I’ve seen the happy hunters who get to see it.

You can't manage nature with your trigger finger. If you have too many does someone is shooting the bucks. Some of y'all can't seem to grasp that concept Biologist included which is where this got started in the fist place.

Shooting does means less deer overall. If you have fewer deer you might have bigger body deer for the ones that are left. That's not rocket science nor does it take anything other than common sense to understand.

What some of y'all can't understand is what happens in the real world. Here in the real world ,you have too many does because someone is shooting the bucks. Having too many does is not a natural occurrence. It's NOT. You can't argue that. It does not happen in nature this way.

1) You shoot a bunch of does and whoever is currently shooting the bucks just keeps shooting the bucks.
2) And then you have less deer and less bucks because you just blasted your breeding stock. That breeding stock was what is allowing the 15 guys in your club or your neighbor to yearly blast 17..... 2-2.5 year old bucks every year.

What you wind up with is less deer and no mature bucks. We've been doing this for over 20 years in this State. But we still have too many does. How could this be? It doesn't work. Fact.

If you never shot a deer there would be the correct amount of bucks and does and your land would have the correct amount of deer on it which it could sustain. Mother Nature will take care of all this for you, you don't have to do a thing.

Truth. Been there, done that. Saw it work on two different properties: one in Bibb county, the other in Franklin.

Yes, take the does away from the green fields.

I always hear that from people who haven't actually done it. They hear about some cigarette smokers experience and they talk like it's their own.

This is my opinion and my opinion only. I think killing the right does rather then any doe helps with keeping bucks in an area outside the rut. I’ve noticed on our place, especially now that baiting is legal that bucks are usually the first deer to find the corn pile. They will eat use that corn pile until some old bitch doe runs them off. I’ve noticed this on plots also. I see this a lot with the cameras. We laid off killing does for the last 5-6 years and it is biting us in the arse. We all agreed to start taking out some of these older aggressive does. You know the ones that just walk around blowing all day long. So far we have killed 3 does on our place. 1 old doe and 2 young does. The same guy shot the 2 young ones. I asked what happened to the plan we had. He said they looked big enough to him.
I’m still on a mission to kill a couple of them long necked long nose blowing bitches but my time is running out. I may be all wrong about the old ones we’re gonna try it.

Your theory might be correct if bucks and does had the same mortality rate. But they don’t..

Thanks for saving me from having to make that post Josh.

The doe to buck ratio strategy is fine until the pop has a significant mortality event. Then it can be a real problem to rebound a population. I created and ran models on our place with these stochastic mortality events...the results are that the variation for doe harvest levels are difficult to predict. Once you go too far (whatever that number is) better keep your fingers crossed that mortality rates don't change.

In practice, our property had 3 bad years of ehd following a doe reduction plan. We have been a decade with almost no does harvested and limited population gains. There are a couple other factors (like flooding) which compound the issue but compounding factors are always around.

Point is, don't assume today's mortality rates will be the same as tomorrow's. Be careful when limiting the breeding females in a population.

The bucks do have a higher mortality rate. 50% of the fawns are bucks. But a natural whitetail deer herd would have a ratio of 1-2 does per buck. That's just fact. If you didn't shoot anything and left them alone that's what you would have. Thinking that you have to shoot the does back or you would have a natural balance of 5:1 is NOT accurate. Facts. They get in the way of a good theory sometimes.

But we aren't raising deer in a sanctuary somewhere so let's move on to what's really happening in Alabama:

If you have 1 deer per 10 acres (which is considered good) and you have 500 acres you have 50 deer. If you start out with a 3:1 buck/doe ratio that's probably close to realistic at the beginning of hunting season. 15 bucks running around. Then you shoot 2-3 bucks each for 5 hunters on 500 acres. You have killed 20% of your overall deer population. The bucks have a higher mortality rate in general..... Whoops.... Now you have essentially wiped them out.

The result - Does are all you have left. Should sound familiar.

So this is what you do..... Shoot a bunch of does. Have less deer. Still have no bucks. Wonder why.

This is a simple concept some of y'all can't grasp.

I am not against managing does by shooting some of them. But the scenario above is what happens in Alabama and is exactly why people "think" they have too many does and need to shoot them. You don't have a doe problem you have people blasting small buck problem. If you shoot a bunch of the does you have less deer next season and even fewer the next and you still don't have a healthy deer herd with any age structure.

Should sound familiar because this is the deer herd in Alabama and doe shooting has done ZERO to help this. We've been doing this for 25 years show me where it has worked. It hasn't.

Shooting does is not the real problem and is definitely not the solution to having a better deer herd with better age structure. It just simply DOES NOT WORK as a blanket overall state wide management plan.

That's why if you only have 500 acres to hunt, you should never take more than 3 bucks year off of it (if it is very good habitat) and preferrably no more than 2 bucks (if it's only avg habitat). Do this and take no more than 5 or so does for meat, given it is only 500 acres. If you have bad neighbors that shoot everything they see, then you'll probably need to reduce these numbers down even more, as appropriate.

It's a real simple concept that you cant seem to grasp, or maybe you do, I just couldnt tell from your post above. Overharvesting and non-selective harvest is a major problem across most of AL. A 5 member club on 500 acres generally means at least 12-15 guns actually hunting it (kids, wives and guests) and everyone of them wants to kill a deer. That right there is the problem. If you've only got 500 acres to hunt and it is average land, average density, and average fawn recruitment for AL, you shouldnt be killing more than 6-8 deer total, off of it in any given year and for every buck killed, you need to kill 2-3 does to account for the 1:3 sex ratio and the fact that the bucks have a significantly higher mortality rate than the does.

If it is done right, it works very well. Problem is, to do it right, you have to have a very large tract of land and good neighbors.

We should hopefully be able to avoid this type of scenario with our property. I am not going to disclose the location or specifics, but we are now luckily part of a continuous 13k+ acre cooperative with the same goals in mind. Our particular property, which is new to us, was mistreated for some time before we took over so we are adopting the practices of our neighbor, which has had great success over a long period of time.

Our expectations from camera surveys is that we will most likely not take any more than 10 bucks this year as a group on a very large piece of land >6,000acres. And that is if every "shooter" and "cull" is taken which rarely ever happens. As stated to qualify as a shooter, the buck must be 4yr+ and all culls have to be pre-approved. Our goal for doe harvest is 50 for the year and will re-evaluate before next year to see where we need to make adjustments.

We understand that this is a long term process and a big commitment. I personally have told myself and other members to go ahead and accept not killing a buck from this property this season and probably not even the next. I keep calling it a 3-4 year probation period. It is a sacrifice we are willing to make in order to have something special.

The most challenging part will be NOT shooting does on plots. Everyone might agree to it, but then won't know where to find them away from the grass.

abolt300 I think we agree. The only way to have "too many does" is an overharvest of the bucks. Pretty simple. Too many does doesn't happen naturally in nature. Natural ratio is 1 to 2:1 does/bucks if everything is left alone in a vacuum.

Blasting a bunch of does doesn't fix the overall problem. The evidence is all around us. We have been blasting does in this State for nearly 25 years and have little to no beneficial impact to the overall deer herd. People have got to quit shooting every 2 year old buck they see.

If you have too many does someone kilt all the bucks. Figure it out.

i dont smoke and never hunt a bad wind. Heck I wont even go if the wind is light and variable. I hunt a place that is 1200 acres and have hunted it for 30 years. We never have seen an increase in deer antlers we probably have larger body deer overall now then we did when we shot 20-30 does a year. I would say we have a 5-1 ratio. We had maybe a 2-1 ratio for a few years but we simply saw fewer deer per sit. No other change was noticed and we eventually decided we liked seeing 8-10 deer per sit as opposed to 3 or 4. When we shot all the does we had fewer fawns and fewer young bucks each year it seemed, the number of older deer has always been 3-5 per season (meaning 4+ yr old deer) regardless of doe harvest in the prior years.

Killing does only helps the buck quality if the deer don't have enough nutritious food. And a lack of food is much less common that most people seem to think now that most of the state is on a rotational pine harvesting cycle. Pines produce an enormous amount of deer browse throughout the cycle other than a few years in the middle where the canopy is shading the ground. It is now almost impossible to have more deer than the land can feed in a rotational pine plantation now that deer have natural predation from coyotes and disease. As long as you have plenty of food, killing does is only going to make you have less bucks, not more or higher quality bucks. The only way you get more quality and quantity of bucks is to shoot less bucks and let them age.

A ton of QDM followers mistakenly attribute the increased quantity of larger bucks they are seeing to their doe harvesting when in all reality it is because they are letting the bucks get older. Just because you let a buck walk doesn't mean you have to also shoot a doe. You may just need to have an empty freezer for a few years until you get more aged bucks in your herd.

There are some places that truly are overpopulated and need doe thinning, but like Matt Brock said, most people don't know enough about what they are doing to know when they need to thin a herd. And the result is that in places where every 100 or so acres is owned by different people, you end up with way too few deer because all it takes is one of those 6 property owners in that square mile to start killing too many does, and now the other 5 owners have to deal with the consequences of that. The one size fits all unlimited doe harvest for the state has been a disaster and you would think that after 25 years of it, the state would have enough evidence to know that it isn't working. We need to go back to the default rule of limited or no doe killing allowed and let the people who feel like they have an overpopulated herd apply for a doe permit like they used to.

Yes sir.

Yes that is true

To me this is one of the topics that's old and boring .

I said this on the other doe killing post and I will elaborate on this one. On our Illinois lease I personally (and I am not the worlds greatest hunter) managed to see in a weeks time several 120-130 inch deer, and piles of young bucks. On the other hand I think that I saw maybe 12 does the entire time I was hunting. The deer I saw cruising the cut corn fields were all bucks. The largest group of does that I saw was 3 antlerless deer. This is on about 500 acres of land 300 of which is hardwoods surrounded by ag fields. My take away from my first time up there aside from the fact that there were bucks everywhere, is that I see far more does here in Alabama on food plots than I did up there. Were the does locked down? Are there less does? Are there far more bucks than does? I am not real sure but I found it odd.

Go to the Gettin Outdoors Podcast and listen to what Mark Buxton says about killing does. Really good info on which ones to shoot, which ones to leave. And whether or not you need to shoot any does at all. And don't let your numbers get so low where you fall into what he called the "predator pit." Been there and that's not fun.

I agree but yet its still an unsolved issue moving forward.....

Everyone around me took all of this as gospel when they started the kill all the does talk and opened up the doe season. We went from seeing 10-20 deer every weekend to 10-20 a year. We are finally regaining some numbers, but it took 20 years. We did not see more bucks, Rut did not intensify, Bucks did not get bigger.

If you are seeing 1 or 2 bucks per sit you are well above the curve. If you shoot a bunch of does you will have less deer, you will see less deer. The only reason to shoot them from a management perspective is if you truly are overpopulated. There are very few placed left in Alabama where that is the case. If you have plenty of deer and want to shoot some does, fine, shoot them. Do not expect to then start seeing more bucks. If you shoot too many it can take a while to recover.

Finally some sense from the QDMERs. Having bucks means not killing all the bucks. Killing does will not make bucks appear. If you need to reduce overall numbers shoot some does, then quit or back off. People Just hear shoot every doe you see and ignore the rest and keep shooting does. Then shoot all the small bucks cause that is all that is left. Then you have nothing.

Pretty obvious why y’all didn’t see any bucks those first 15 years. They all got shot when they was 18 months old. I guess y’all eventually figured that out since you quit killing them.

If everyone is blasting all the small bucks then how is it every year most people always have a pile of young bucks on camera or living on the property. The next year people figure they are gonna have a fine crop of shooter bucks because they were on the property or on camera until they shed their horns way after season. The next year same thing most people have a lot of young two and three year old bucks on camera or on the property but the ones that were three last year and four this year are few and far between. You can’t tell me all these bucks randomly died months after the season. The older bucks living on a property know how to hide. We have seen and done and it. Everyone’s property is different. Down here where I hunt there’s a lot deer and most everyone wants to shoot big bucks and no one hardly shoots does therefore the population will get out of wack. One of my properties is over run with does that will run the bucks off the food source. Then when the rut comes in we have so many does you never see any bucks chase hardly and the does that are in heat go to the bucks. When you constantly see 10-15 deer and maybe one buck there’s a problem. There’s been times 60- 70 deer have been seen between three hunters on a piece of property and only four bucks total is not a good ratio.

I don’t think those numbers would qualify as being anywhere close to an aggressive doe harvest. Your basically talking about killing 4-6 does per square mile along with 2-3 bucks. There are a lot of posts on here where they are killing 2-3 times that many does, which will not work if your neighbors are doing the same thing. I would also guess that the average deer hunter in AL won’t settle for paying what it cost to lease 100-150’acres per member and average killing 1 doe a year and 1 buck every 2-3 years. I would guess that on average your 500-600 acre lease is killing 8-10 does a year and 5-6 bucks a year. Then you have some killing every doe they can and very few bucks wondering why they never see any deer. And some killing no or very few does and killing way more bucks wondering why they never see any big bucks. Hardly anyone ever does it correctly they always go to far one way or the other. If people would only killed bucks that was 4-5 years old and older and then the next year set there doe harvest to 1.5-2 does for each buck they killed they would be in your range and right where they need to be to keep a balanced herd and age structure . But people just can’t do it. That’s my opinion from hunting in a lot different clubs all over this state for the past 30 years.

I'll tell you a first hand experience with aggressive doe killing. I hunted a 2000ac piece of property at Lock 7 in Greene Co, right along the river. Three hunters could each see 20-40 deer in an evening sit. Landowner joined the DMAP program first year it was available. We killed prolly 50 does and no bucks the first year. By the end of season one could not hardly see ANY deer at all by any method. Waaaayy too much hunting pressure. Next year was worse, deer sightings were way down. After season, in late Feb we started seeing deer. They were there but we in non stop hiding, moving at night.

Yeah, but I bet those bucks y'all didn't see were really big and well-nourished

I’ve seen more good places ruined by killing does than I’ve ever heard of being helped by killing does. I’ve killed my share of does mostly with a bow on places that had lots of deer with low neighbor kills but overall on most places in Alabama the doe killing needs to be cut way back. Too many small tracts of land with trigger happy people using the old saying of trying to feed their family. I’m so sick of hearing this I want to just ask if they have ever heard of a grocery store. Just my observation from 40 years of hunting in this state

Nite hunters take our does...havnt killed one in several years and even if I killed every one I saw it'd be less than 10 on 1800 acres...I see more bucks than does and that keeps me hunting around the house...

Everything about deer hunting in the Midwest is so different you can to compare it to deer hunting in AL (abundance of high quality food, virtually no thick cover, way shorter season open fields everywhere etc etc). About the only thing that is the same is they are both deer.

In real time hunting i ain't seen when where a lot of all this talk mattered.

Managing deer is a thing of dreams for most hunters any way

Yep

Bottom line is for an animal.that is so heavily studied both by the layperson and scientists the modeling of whitetail populations is pretty poor. Lots of people have ideas (some very sound) but there are several variables that are difficult to reproduce making these one size fit all strategies a struggle. But you gotta start selling something I guess. Just a decade ago I created a model and it was pretty dang hard just to find survival rates. Not to mention how hard it is to determine the carry capacity, immigration, and emigration. Crap shot is what I'd say.

Fact of the matter is, strategic and intense doe harvest can assist in improving hunting quality and success if it’s part of a comprehensive management program. That said, Goat is pretty spot on when it comes to the average hunting property in AL. Problem is, they aren’t all average. We hammer does on some properties and have yet to negatively impact the deer sightings or hunting success. We are very deliberate and precise in how/where/when we start killing does. There has to be purpose behind each harvest decision otherwise you’ll eventually end up off target.

#1 thing is you have to have a lot of acres or be in a group of highly cooperative people. Without that you’re fighting an uphill battle you’ll never win.

Same here - after managing multiple properties over a nearly 30 year time period.

When I read of people talking about going back to aggressive doe killing days I just shake my head.

I've hunted in Marengo, Clarke, Wilcox, and Dallas counties since the late 80's. In all that time, I've only had one property that really needed aggressive doe harvest. The people leasing it before me had been killing any and every forked horn buck they saw for the past 20 years and zero does. It was a deer factory. Never seen numbers like this place had. They averaged killing 30-45 immature bucks a year, every year, on that 2800 acre tract while never shooting the first doe. There was a visible browse line across the entire acreage. No preferred natural browse anywhere on it from 0-6 ft high. Opening morning first year I had it, I sat from daylight til about 9:00 and saw 47 does and yearlings watching a 30 acre section of 2 yr old cutover. We killed 159 does the first year, and 140 something the second. Backed down to around 70 in year 3 and around 50 in year 4. Did not shoot but 2 bucks off the place in the first 4 years we had it due to entire age classes of young bucks having been wiped out annually for the past 20 yrs. Starting the 5th year, our buck age structure was improving and we shot 4 yr old and older bucks and backed our doe killing down to just a mantenance level of killing about 20-25 does per year off it (mostly during bow season) from there on out. It was necessary on that place but that is the only place I've had where agressive doe harvest was truly and actually needed. Doe weight avg went from 87 lbs in yr one to 112lb in year 5 or 6 and 4 yr old bucks went from 160-165lb in early years to 190-200 in later years. We were on the DMAP program and I've still got the data somewhere. We also planted every single inch of open area that we could get a disc in the ground, year round.

I always figure that deer are nearly impossible to manage as a one size fits all. Everyone’s property is different. You have different forage, cover, pressure, etc... our farm is just over 800 acres, no livestock, a river on one side, bottom land and mountain. Roughly 150 acres planted for deer/turkey and is hunted maybe 20 days a year for deer. All property that borders us is managed for deer and I think that comes out to just over 5000 acres as a whole. We shoot mature deer, does and bucks. 15 years ago we tried to take 20 does, we get about 8 a year. We try to shoot 8pt and better on the bucks.

All of that to say I just think you can slightly influence the deer on your property. I’m not sure you can actually manage them like you would livestock, and what works for one might not for another. I also don’t think it hurts to try.