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