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Re: Aggressive Doe Harvesting
[Re: Goatkiller]
#3280276
12/01/20 07:13 PM
12/01/20 07:13 PM
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Joined: Mar 2015
Posts: 4,498 george county ms
johndeere5036
10 point
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10 point
Joined: Mar 2015
Posts: 4,498
george county ms
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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. 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.
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Re: Aggressive Doe Harvesting
[Re: abolt300]
#3280286
12/01/20 07:23 PM
12/01/20 07:23 PM
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Joined: Dec 2009
Posts: 5,517 Land of the free because of th...
mike35549
12 point
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12 point
Joined: Dec 2009
Posts: 5,517
Land of the free because of th...
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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. 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.
If you're gonna be stupid you better be tough.
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Re: Aggressive Doe Harvesting
[Re: booner]
#3280294
12/01/20 07:28 PM
12/01/20 07:28 PM
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Joined: Sep 2004
Posts: 36,184 alabama
BhamFred
Freak of Nature
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Freak of Nature
Joined: Sep 2004
Posts: 36,184
alabama
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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.
I've spent most of the money I've made in my lifetime on hunting and fishing. The rest I just wasted.....
proud Cracker-Americaan
muslims are like coyotes, only good one is a dead one
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Re: Aggressive Doe Harvesting
[Re: booner]
#3280320
12/01/20 07:52 PM
12/01/20 07:52 PM
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Joined: Mar 2018
Posts: 16,827 Banana Republic
jb20
Old Mossy Horns
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Old Mossy Horns
Joined: Mar 2018
Posts: 16,827
Banana Republic
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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...
They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety. Ben Franklin
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Re: Aggressive Doe Harvesting
[Re: chad1980]
#3280326
12/01/20 07:59 PM
12/01/20 07:59 PM
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Joined: Dec 2009
Posts: 5,517 Land of the free because of th...
mike35549
12 point
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12 point
Joined: Dec 2009
Posts: 5,517
Land of the free because of th...
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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. 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.
If you're gonna be stupid you better be tough.
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Re: Aggressive Doe Harvesting
[Re: CNC]
#3280342
12/01/20 08:15 PM
12/01/20 08:15 PM
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Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 15,862 Elmore County
Frankie
Old Mossy Horns
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Old Mossy Horns
Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 15,862
Elmore County
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To me this is one of the topics that's old and boring .
I agree but yet its still an unsolved issue moving forward..... 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
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Re: Aggressive Doe Harvesting
[Re: Ben2]
#3280396
12/01/20 08:51 PM
12/01/20 08:51 PM
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Joined: Dec 2004
Posts: 3,996 Central AL
March15
10 point
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10 point
Joined: Dec 2004
Posts: 3,996
Central AL
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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 Yep
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Re: Aggressive Doe Harvesting
[Re: March15]
#3281155
12/02/20 02:53 PM
12/02/20 02:53 PM
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Joined: Aug 2005
Posts: 8,363 Montgomery
WmHunter
14 point
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14 point
Joined: Aug 2005
Posts: 8,363
Montgomery
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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 Yep 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.
"The Tree of Liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." Thomas Jefferson
" Chuck Sykes is a dictator control freak like Vladimir Putin " WmHunter
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Re: Aggressive Doe Harvesting
[Re: booner]
#3281170
12/02/20 03:22 PM
12/02/20 03:22 PM
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Joined: Nov 2011
Posts: 10,517
abolt300
Booner
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Booner
Joined: Nov 2011
Posts: 10,517
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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.
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