Killing Doe question

I have a lease in Dayton Al. We don't pressure it at all. The club next door shoots a lot. So I ask my neighbor and says he's heard that each member has to kill 5 doe before can shoot a buck. Seems crazy to me especially since there LO has cut lots of their timber. Does that seen to be too many. The herd down here isn't what it use to be

Yep that's too many.

Not enough info to know. How much land? How many members? What's the deer population? Maybe it's too many, can't say. If they are able to kill that many there must be a lot of deer there.

Speaking the LO in area they say it's nowhere near what it use to be. They have aprox 1300 acres with aprox 10 members

50 does on 1300 acres, holy crap!! That's way too many. I seriously doubt they are killing that many does. Not sure what the density numbers would be but it's got to be off the chart.
I hunt on 4000 acres and we kill maybe 25-30 and we have a good population.

X2. I am no expert but I would think the same.

Maybe they just want fewer deer on their land.

If that is the goal that will definitely get it done.

We have 10-11,000 acres and have only killed around 50 does the last two years. So yes they're killing way too many does.

They may not be killing too many. I've seen properties that could sustain doe harvests that high. It all depends on soil productivity, habitat quality, and fawn recruitment.

I would question whether they actually have to kill 5 does.

They might actually have that many deer, one of the places I hunted this year the landowner wanted to kill 35 does off of it. Its only a 1000 acre tract and every time I went I saw a minimum of 20 does. Killed 8 for him so far. So it's possible.

If their property is a doe sink, then there are doe deer from adjoining properties standing in line to get on that property. We used to kill 10-12 doe's off 236 acres, and never could tell a difference in the doe density.

Now that is what is called hunting pressure....

Hunted one of my GFs joining them yesterday. This field use to fill up with 20 to 30 deer in an afternoon 10 to 15 years ago. Yesterday I see two yearling spikes and zero doe. Early in the year we may see 5 or 6 doe now none. We shot one coyote in this stand and a 7 point buck. We took one doe early in bow season. That's it. Hardly no pressure. Im like most of you, I can't see how they could be killing that many doe even if they had 3000 or more acres.
Guess I'm sort of frustrated to be paying a high lease amount and not see many deer.

I remember hunting Dallas County back in the 90's when the laws changed allowing does to be killed all season long. This was during a time when you couldn't sling a dead cat in the woods without hitting a doe. We had 964 acres and killed about 35-38 does in one season. We probably could have killed 50. The next season, we killed about the same amount. The third season we only killed about 18-20. By the fourth season we were down to about 12-15. All the time Gulf States was telling us we weren't killing enough does. By the fifth season we killed less than 10 does off of 964 acres.

Ah come on Ford. Those reduced deer sightings were probably just due to one of your neighbors putting out some dreaded evil corn that instantly made all the deer in the area go nocturnal. You can never shoot too many does.

The above message brought to you by Alfa insurance where our motto is, "Deer, Kill All the Mother######s Before our Clients Do It with a Car."

This happened in a lot of places in south AL. I know a cpl places where they had to go get jaw bones from the processor because they reached a point where they could not kill the number of does that was required by the land owner. Pure insanity!

We are gonna light up some does tomorrow!!

Because y'all slowed down on your own, or did the deer become more wary due to the pressure?

I don't disagree that in the 90's, early 2000's there were probably too many deer, but I think this QDMA hoodoo, and the rules, gave people that just really like to shoot or kill something, a reason to KILL. I can remember seeing 10 to 20 deer average, every day I hunted in the 90's to early 2000's no matter what county I was in. Now, not gonna happen in Chambers, Lee and especially Tallapoosa. You might see 1 to 4, 9 or 10 on an awesome day. From what we get on trail cameras, to get that magical QDMA 1:1 buck to do ratio, we would have to buy does and turn em loose on our land.

Are there really less deer, or because of years of hammering them anytime you saw them, they became harder to see? I've said it before and i'll say it again. Deer sightings are the least reliable proof of deer density. Deer density camera studies are the only reliable way to determine whether there are more or less deer.

He just hit the nail on the head. Unless you have a good many cameras out, you don't know how many deer you have. Our club really slows down after the December rut and the sightings go down dramatically. Add in the fact that one of our neighbors clearcut several hundred acres right up to our property line which reduced sightings even more. You'd think we hardly have any deer. But when we check the cameras on the plots, there are multiple deer (more does) on each field at night. Our harvest averages about 3 does for every buck killed and has for years. This is the first year in a long time that jawbones have been collected on this property so I'm anxious to see what the data tells us.

I run two cameras on my personal property which is just under 100 acres and I run twelve on my club which is 1500 acres. I run these cameras all year. I have hunted both these properties most of my life and yes there is LESS deer.

bigt I agree. I've hunted for 32 years, and I see fewer deer now than ever. I run alot of cameras 7 to 8 months of the year, and the deer numbers way are down based on my '' data ''. I do hunt a place with alot of pressure, but even in the off season, the quantity increase of deer changes very little.

that's crazy

My guess would be because most of them were dead.

I think a lot of folks could probably shoot less does than what they think they “need” to shoot. The health of the habitat will suffer before the health of the herd. Most everyone here probably have a deer herd that would be considered “healthy”. The impact the herd is having on the understory is probably what varies much more between us folks of similar habitats.

I’ve hunted several different counties and properties over the years. The land I hunt now in Barbour Co from a habitat standpoint is really not any different than the land I use to hunt in Tallapoosa Co. Both are just pine plantations with inter mingled hardwood drainages. However, the deer population on the property in Barbour Co is WAY higher than the Tallapoosa Co land. Looking back on it, even though there was a decent deer population on the Tallapoosa land…..from a herd health standpoint there probably wasn’t really a “need” to harvest any does during the time period I hunted it. The deer herd could have tolerated a higher density than it had and still been ok....as shown by the very similar Barbour Co property.

We commonly talk about measurements of individual deer health as why we shoot does and keep the population down but the deer on the higher density Barbour Co land are still very healthy. Deer are covered with fat, weights are good, and twinning rates excellent, etc. The biggest difference in the two properties is the effect the deer herd is having on the understory. The higher density herd is using up all of the understory growth (regeneration) to maintain herd health while the land with the lower density herd had much more regeneration able to be found.


So in the end, I think for the vast majority of us, the number of does we “need” to shoot will come down to the question of……. In what state do you want to maintain your habitat?….or in other words, how intensely are you going to graze your pasture? If you let it go to the point that deer health is suffering as a measurement of too many, then that means that the habitat has long since been toasted. I don’t think very many people are at that point where the deer are really suffering. We are just floating up and down a sliding scale on how much we “graze the pasture”. Hope that makes sense.

^^This^^. We didn't slow down on our own. I remember one season where I think I saw maybe 3-4 deer all season. This was on a piece of property where I once killed three deer by the morning of the second day of the season. We weren't a bunch of grass watchers either. We'd hunt the plots some but also hunted woods, cutover, gas line, etc... We had areas that were buck only to reduce the amount of shots. We also had designated parking areas where you had to park and walk to where you were going to hunt. Even deer tracks were scarce. I'll never be convinced the deer were still there but had gotten wise. We just killed them out, I truly believe, or at least killed them down to where their numbers were extremely low.

People talk about the deer destroying or limiting the regeneration of the natural habitat. Where I hunt that is not possible because there is no natural habitat. It has already been destroyed and replaced by the timber companies. There is nothing left to harm. It is a non native habitat full of pine trees and invasive species making up at least half the understory. The native forest is gone never to return. I am not complaint about the timber companies it is there land and they are just trying to make money off of it. But the deer can not hurt what does not exsist. Besides what they don't eat the timber companies will kill the next time they spray. If you are killing deer with normal weights there is no reason to kill any does. Not saying people shouldn't there is just no reason to other than you wanted to.

speaking of destroying habitat by timber companies planting all pines, well that is true and its getting worse. In a lot of states there is a law stopping timber companies from planting all pines or marketable trees. A portion of planting must be trees of value to wildlife. I wish some of our southern states would also do that.

I would just be happy if they would let us put in a 1 acre green field for every 100 acres of pines.

This is a big gripe in my ass. I we used to at least get 50yd wide smzs now your lucky if they are 20 feet. That is a load of bullshit that needs to change or what little bit of hardwood we have left will be gone. I own 40 acres and half of it is hardwood and a little less than half long leaf pines. I'm not saying that's ideal but as much as pines are needed I hate them three fold.