Too many does, not enough bucks

Seems to be whats up around here. We were headed that direction last year. The rut took a long time. Does were giving birth for three months atleast this year. Itll probably be worse this year. I feel like there has been a problem with our bucks this year because it was so dry, but we havent found any dead. I know we arent getting anywhere close to the number of pictures we usually get of bucks. Especially not older bucks. I know someone will say "you killed them all". We did get pics of several when season was over last year. Not quite as many as usual, but several. Theyre gone now. We are not doe killers. Havent killed one in 7-8 yrs. But i have recommended to some neighbors we might want to kill a couple does this year and leave the younger bucks alone. Joseph killed an old doe yesterday evening. I sure liked our numbers getting high. We been working hard on that for years but this isnt what we were shooting for. I hope the neighbors will refrain from killing every buck they see this year.

I need to shoot lot more does at Wilcox spot - I rather buck hunt - prob take few there this year after I harv buck

Last time I ran cams three year ago I was about 50/50 if you count all male deer

Until we have cold weather like they do up north we ain't gonna have a rut like the do up north . Sooooooo deal with it . Lol

Had 17 out back yesterday. One shooter buck and a couple small ones. Not sure the sex of all the fawns. Several mature does

I'm pretty sure I got more bucks than does...they ain't many of either but several shooters, more than any other year for me

Think about this next time you shoot a doe-"Which doe is going to raise the next world record?" Something to think about. I havent killed a doe in decades. Too many coyotes, cars, keeping the numbers low. BTW-I didnt kill a deer last year. Let 3 super nice bucks live another year and the results are amazing! Someone had a byline on here that said "save the little ones for the little ones."

My $0.02

All i think about is how they gonna taste . Pretty sure there more does running around with the same genetics

Teacher one, im not a doe killing fan. I sat in my shooting house one evening a month or so ago, saw 30 deer. One spike. Im afraid our rut is fixin to get in a mess. I wont be killing any does. I just dont enjoy it. But i have recommended to some neighbors if theyre gona shoot 2-3 deer to eat, theres plenty of does, not plenty of bucks. Weve worked hard to get our numbers up and discouraged doe killing but i think we are in a little different situation right now. I dont particularly like it but its where we are.

We don’t shoot does in Clarke - but the ones that bust a hunt a lot need to get shot

I never like shooting does

Wilcox just had lots of does in general - I take a few w bow - need to take few more - just not big fan of shooting them
Can’t remember last time I shot one w rifle

You leave does alone it don't take but a couple years to have plenty . I used to kill 7 to 11ever year here and never saw a difference . I ain't kill nothing in three years so I bet there's a few to many now. Lol

Remember , just to keep the numbers you have now you need to kill about half.

I would think that would highly dependent on recruitment rate, no??......That’s not a constant from property to property

I figured he had the common sense to know what I meant . I figure he saw 30 in one setting he's doing pretty good and gaining .

Wasnt long ago our numbers were dropping but everyone was killing does. It was pretty hard to get them to stop. Theres more deer here than ive ever seen so its time to change strategy a little. We dont need a five month long rut

I ain't shot a doe in 10 years and I may see 20 deer a year, luckily more bucks than does

That’s a problem. Not desirable.

Every time a trigger is pulled a management decision is made. EVERY time. You can not manage deer without doe harvest. It’s impossible. Buck mortality is considerably higher than doe mortality if you completely take hunting out of the equation. The rigors of rut, fighting, stress, and highway mortality takes more bucks than most people think, even in the south. Add hunting related mortality to a herd that’s skewed heavily in favor of does and you have a never ending cycle of long drawn out ruts, low buck recruitment and retention, and stressed deer. There are people who think saving does attracts bucks and that’s the way to manage deer. Well it’s not. I hate to burst so many bubbles. That’s an awful way to manage deer and quite honestly is counterproductive to having a healthier more reproductively successful population. It adds increased breeding pressure and stress to bucks and prolongs the breeding season. That type of management can actually lead to lower recruitment. But hey, I killed a big one on that herd of does. It’s worth it. 😂 Peoplr have a misconception that deer breed like cattle. Get cattle as far away from deer management as you can. They are not the same. One buck can not breed multiple does in the time frame he’s given without, often irreversible, side effects.

I joke, but really, having a population heavily weighted in favor of does is bad. It can be corrected but takes work. Jwalker, might I ask why you are not in favor of killing does? Is it because you think you’ll lower the population? Is it too much work? Requesting neighbors to take care of a problem you all share is not going to help. You need to kill some deer. And you all, as a community, need to lay off buck harvest. They are getting shot. You may not think they are, and all your neighbors may not be honest, but they’re getting shot.

Imo , you fighting a losing battle. Long as you have late born does you gonna have 5 month rut . Doe ant gonna breed till she's ready even you got two buck to ever doe

I don’t trap In Wilcox caise I got so many does - dogs get some plus I can’t turkey hunt it

What I’m seeing on my property is I’m pulling deer. You can sit at my place and see ten or so deer just about every sit with it being about half and half as far as bucks and does. You go 3/4-1 mile away over on the club next door to me and maybe see one deer per sit if you’re lucky. On the club though it seems to be more of an intense rut while my property it seems to be later for one but not real busy during the rut. Most all my does have either twins or one fawn with them so they are getting bred but it seems like the rut just about don’t happen there until about the end of season but the club seems to always happen around the 1st of January

Matt, i just dont get any enjoyment out of killing does. I do enjoy watching them. Thats just how i feel. I dont expect everyone else to feel that way. I wouldn't judge anyone for killing whatever they want. Like i said, a few years ago our numbers got pretty low. I just felt like killing one doe this year equaled two or three less deer next year. I let my son kill some does when he was young and started hunting. After that we just stopped. Three years ago we got pics of 20-25 different bucks around first of season. I would encourage letting the does live and killing a buck or two to eat. It has changed now. I know our rut will drag out this year. Maybe itll get better next year. I believe several years ago we had more bucks than does. Rut would go quick and crazy. Problem was nobody had enough patience to wait on a buck, they shot the first doe they saw. I might be wrong about all of it, i dont know

If i waz seeing the same numbers I won't kill many either . But to deer are dieing some where

Mbrock, you may be right about does in populations that are on the right side of the population curve. But, when a population is struggling due to disease, predation, or human caused additive mortality it is a different story. For instance, if you have 10 deer per square mile (and K is 40) and a person has 3-4 does they see regularly and only 1 buck it would be silly to worry about buck:doe ratios. Does can bring in bucks in low population senerios or even in higher populations when the buck:doe ratio is closer to one.

I know you know this but your previous post I think assumes population growth is high or at least positive. That isnt always the case.

Edit: I will say I 100% agree with you in JWs senerio. He needs to kill some does or get somebody else in there to do it for him.

Matt is answering all of your questions. Colleges like Auburn and Miss State are spending all of this money on studying whitetail sun our habitat! What they find is well published. When I took classes at Auburn with Dr Keith Causey he pointed out often the “the Hunter” would always put emotions into the science. The emotion refers to backwards ass thinking that someone’s grandad thought them from the 60’s. Truth is that there weren’t many deer back then so that way of thinking did exist. Todays deer herds are completely different. Modern deer herd management has changed. If people want good results, then practice good deer management. I don’t truly look forward to shooting does as it limits my hunting opportunities for shooting a big buck. I do enjoy the meat in the freezer!

If any of you have been to south Texas, they manage the deer in ways you can’t imagine. The ranch I hunted last year was going to have to shoot 300 does the last 2 weeks of the season to hit management goals. 300! And they did it.

Meanwhile the overall population across the state continues to decline.....Keep on shooting them though....nothing to see here.

Matt - what about when you are talking about small properties? I think JWalker is on a small parcel. How much good or bad can he really do on a small parcel by not killing does? Seems like to me he can’t kill enough to help the population but he can dang sure kill enough to run them off of his small piece. I just don’t think you can treat every property the same unless you and your neighboring few thousand acres are all on the exact same page.

Matt. I agree on the cow thing . We ain't never gonna have enough control over deer .

One of these day's I'm going to Montgomery and see if I can get my hands ahold of the , conceptive dates from here and just figure out what percentage of the does that are breed in Feb. And what they are the other months I believe most does here are breed in the other months. I may be wrong and that would be OK but I'd know

It is much smaller than alot of the clubs yall hunt. Also more residential. Way too many people hunting. It liked to have got messed up

For this topic that reply make no sense

In kansas, the strategy (back in the 90's) was to shoot every doe you saw. Then that property would be ready to go a couple years later. The problem at that time was that not enough tags existed to perform the management. That can lead to unethical thinning when big time money is involved.

The shooter I saw yesterday was messing with the does

Is it possible for some rut activity right now? I been seeing some activity that doesn't line up with normal behavior but I'm not seeing scrapes or anything...

Something that isnt being taken into consideration with this conversation is that when you zoom out and look at the landscape from 30,000 ft we’re not dealing with an evenly distribute population of males and females…….Yhe female populations exist in the areas best suited to raise fawns…… ……With coyotes being widely distributed and populated it makes it where only certain “stands” of habitat really support deer production…..Bucks on the other hand often gravitate toward the secondary habitats once dispersed and are much more capable of occupying more of the map than does. This is simply because does are restricted to living where there is fawning habitat while bucks are not……Successful reproduction of more deer is dependent on the fawning hotspots

If you have a property which is a productive property for does to give birth and raise fawns……all you are doing by shooting a bunch of them is reducing the number of future bucks being produced for the bigger area.

Yeah , but the does on a spot gotta eat . Poor health gonna affect fawn rates. Sate and the people that hunt the other spots can worry about the numbers there

The mistake in my mind is the ideology of trying to “manage” 500 acres…..or manage a 1000 acres……as is if it exists inside of a box and not effected by the other 20,000 acres around it. Just because you see 30 does on a 100 acre parcel means nothing as it concerns “needing to shoot some” without taking into consideration what else exists within a 5 mile radius…..Food is usually not the issue. Where are these areas where food is a major limiting factor to the deer herd?? Food on a landscape scale is not really a limiting factor……Coyotes have made quality fawning habitat and fawn production the main limiting factor for deer populations now.

I don't care about the 20,000 ac around me . Not my problem . They want a lot breeding bucks they need to stop killing a lot of breeding bucks

You can be like our neighbor and just shoot anything that is brown. Our place plus our other neighbor is about 8000 acres. Combined we have killed 13 deer so far. The neighbor in the middle has 140 acres and they shot 12 the first weekend of gun season. They are super lucky we are there to feed and protect all the deer they shoot.

QDMA your way in to rarely seeing deer. Kill a doe no telling you might be killing your next big buck. Habitat is shrinking fast. People building everywhere now.

Yeah , just way it is . I've let a lot go just to have it brought by and showed to me .

You have data to back that up? What areas? The whole state? Just in your area?

That is a very broad statement and entirely inaccurate. Deer populations continue to grow in large areas of the state. Northwest AL is where the black belt was 30-40 years ago with population explosions. Deer numbers are seemingly at all time highs in several counties. Deer harvest is absolutely ridiculous. Large numbers of deer are being killed and it’s not slowing down. Numbers are going up, habitat is staying about the same, and if it’s not corrected we will see the natural response to that. I work with properties all over the state. Population numbers are not a concern with any of them. There’s plenty of deer.

Now I say ALL of that and don’t want it to be taken out of context. I work with properties that I do not recommend high doe harvest. That doesn’t mean they have dwindling deer numbers. It just simply doesn’t make sense to kill a lot of does given their objectives. Coyotes being on the scene has also changed deer management. That’s always a consideration now, when it wasn’t just several years ago.

One thing I do not think is helping, and can say publicly now, is the February extension in the entire state combined with cameras and bait. It’s a disaster and I called it from day one. Deer harvest used to be a random event. Meaning we scouted as hunters, played the game, and killed whatever buck we saw because that’s what we had to kill. That left harvest to totally random chance. Now, hunters use cameras and bait to “select” their harvest which is leading to a multitude of issues. The buck segment is being high graded to death and from what I’ve seen, older age class bucks are decreasing in the population. Every one with a camera is hunting “their” deer until he’s dead. Ironically, most of the time, these deer are 3 year olds. If they survive the December/January rut north of Highway 82, they become dependent on late season bait to recover, and they’re getting smoked those last ten days cause people can’t help themselves. That’s not helping herd health. It’s exacerbating an existing issue. Shed bucks are also being killed at higher rates than I think the state realized would occur.

CNC I just have to disagree with your statement based off what I see from the properties I work on.

Where it becomes an issue is large areas of the state with smaller parcels of land ownership and extremely liberal seasons/limits. That would primarily be south AL and the TN valley. The TN valley certainly needed the limited doe harvest opportunities and they got it. You can’t have an unlimited antlerless bag limit an entire season length with most properties being 40-100 acres in open habitat. That’s a recipe for disaster.

Matt , lol funny all the talk , all the study and research and it alllllll come's down to trigger control

Or lack thereof in some cases too. 😂

Serious question:

How do you know how many deer you have on your property?

Always wondered that

Sometimes I sit out there all day and see 10 deer. Sometimes I go out there and see 0

I hunted every day from 11/17-11/26 on 3 different properties

Thigpen Hill SOA, some forever wild property in Dallas county, and my grandfathers property on the Dallas-Perry county line

I never saw a single deer. Neither did my guest I brought with me. He hunted with me on all 3 properties

Are we bad hunters? Maybe...but eventually I would’ve thought one would at least kinda wander by

What y’all make of that?

I don't know , there's a 30ac spot next to ours that I hunted for 30 years and I never killed a deer on it or coming off it . 200 yards away I've killed trucks loads .

I just did what I’ve always done. Tried to hunt acorns dropping close to thick cover. Hell it ain’t rocket science to get some kind of deer in front of you and I couldn’t manage to do it in almost 9 days on 3 different properties in the black belt

Don’t get it at all

Managing deer and not killing does lol😂 now that’s funny

Nightwatchman,,,,, don't know what to say on that one .

Me either brother. Don’t make no sense

Whole bunch of truth in that statement.

I never understood someone not killing a doe because “she might give birth to the next world record”
How do you know you aren’t killing the buck that will sure the next world record?
Like the does are having virgin births. Those same people saying that probably shoot cull bucks too. Talk about not making any sense.

I love shooting and eating does! I'd be happy to help you with your problem JWalker. I won't even charge a management consulting fee lol.

Edit: You could probably make a grand or so leasing doe hunting rights on your land. You just need to make sure they are disciplined hunters who won't shoot your bucks.

We seem to have 50 50 ratio.

We are shooting bucks for meat this year.

Leave the baby makers be.

Well said! Said before! Will be said again!

Me and a buddy bow hunted 2 fields a couple weeks ago.

Between us we saw 24 racked bucks and 25 does.

Do you think we need to shoot every doe we see?

Id be happy if we had nothin but does.. but we aint got nothin but armadillers..let me just complain about havin toooo many deer…wheres my monicle an top hat..

I would be happy as crap with the situation except for the lack of bucks this year. If there were 30 bucks and 30 does, that would be great.

Honestly there's no way we can answer that

Heck I wish we could complain about too many does. We have the opposite problem with property being very buck heavy. I don't see us having much of a rut...gonna be fast and furious.

I had one piece of property that was like that. You better kill your bucks before the rut or it wasn’t gonna happen until they came back home and were back feeding again. Normally when the rut started kicking in all the bucks would leave for a few weeks and what didn’t get shot would come back home. I had another piece like that and it had some of the best rut action but it lasted about two or three days and it was over

This is my first year on the 200 acres I leased. Trying to figure it out before I start shooting. In 3 sits I’ve seen 32 deer. 5 bucks but only 2 racks, both small. Rest does and yearlings. I’m gonna try and take 2 or 3 but being such a small tract, I hate to shoot and blow the place up. One reason I’m seeing a lot of deer is that pressure has historically been really low and I’m trying to keep it that way. I know the rut is screwed up on this place. I had a spotted fawn on camera on April 22nd.

Do y'all think there are any females being bred in the spring at the age of 7-8 months old????

Ive never seen any does that young around here having babies. Cant say its never happened but ive never seen it and i do look. Alot of times in the fall we see a big doe leading around a smaller doe and a baby. Never see the big doe and smaller doe both with a baby. We do have twins occasionally but not mich, but they always belong to the big doe. Sometimes might even be a couple big does running with a smaller one or two. I have noticed too that the groups of does dont seem to get along real good sometimes. Alot of times one group will leave the feeder when another group approaches. I just assumed they are in competition. But i have also seen a doe leave one group and go to another group and run with them. Also seen a group walk clear across a field to pick up a single doe then go right back the way they came from, i figured maybe they got separated the night before or something, that always happens in the morning if it happens. I really enjoy watching these groups of does but i have a hard time figuring out exactly why they do what they do.

I hav seen chasing in March and fresh scrapes in April - not sure who was getting screwed

MSU deer lab says this is uncommon. Their bodies are designed to put resources into their own growth, not growing another fawn.

An important aspect to think about when you "have too many does" is whether you're lacking bucks in the population (dying from disease or hunter's) or if your carrying capacity is maxed out? Their is an important difference between the 2 and if it is the prior then killing more does will have little effect.

Ive asked around and nobody close by is getting many buck pics but are getting more doe pics than usual. I have some bucks that were still alive after season last year that are gone now. Thats the part that worries me. Im afraid they are dead

The mortality rate is what it is. They died of disease or someone shot them. "They" (neighbors) are going to say nobody shot "too many" bucks... but obviously that has happened. Either way they are dead. If they were hit by a car or EHD this has to be factored in as a dead deer and you have to adjust accordingly.

IMO what has happened here is that in your general vicinity the majority of the bucks have been shot. Realistically that can happen. We are talking last year, they year before and the year before that.

Every year what is getting killed are small bucks. Even if that number killed is low that is simply because you started with low numbers. There is no net gain at the end of deer season. It's just math.

Year after year you have few bucks and the ones you do have are young, save maybe one or two that has gotten lucky or remained hidden. There are always those.

What all this means... you have is a bunch of does. I say... Welcome to most properties in Alabama. IMO this is typical scenario.

If you are not seeing 3 and 4 year old bucks, someone shot them when they were 2, or at least they shot too many and now you can't replenish the stock.

This is just like raising cows in a pasture and this is not rocket surgery. It doesn't take a biology degree only common sense.

DCNR says go blast all the does and problem solved. That's stupid. Don't do it. You need the does to build back the buck population if you want to get it right. BUT this might not be in your control simply because you can't manage a small tract in isolation.

What has happened to a lot of hunters/clubs is they listened to the academic theory and went and shot up all their does.. now they don't have nearly as many deer period... that's bucks or does.

Not even remotely in the same category as raising cows. Not for one second.

What has actually happened is MISAPPLICATION of sound and scientifically tested management practices by unqualified individuals.

Not even remotely in the same category as raising cows. Not for one second.

What has actually happened is MISAPPLICATION of sound and scientifically tested management practices by unqualified individuals.

If you had control of the deer and what killed them ,,, wouldn't much difference or with ant other animal including humans

And if a frog had wings he wouldnt bump his ass when he hopped

MISAPPLICATION , is the right word . Lol

I watched Marty Stoufers wild America series and one in particular followed the life of a whitetail buck from birth to death. He dies from the stress of the rut in his prime, literally wore himself out. I’ve seen a few bucks in similar shape. Laying in a creek with pure exhaustion. All they could do was to get up and make it a little ways and collapse again.