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