Do you want me to make some charts to illustrate how this is occurring a little better???

That may be helpful.

Lol cnc it's like you ask one question and get a answer then ask the pretty much same question but changed . Hoping to at some point get the answer you like lol

Course I don't care just how it seems to me lol

Knowing how managing deer ain't that hard . If you ain't got a large spot of land you just gonna have what you have . You kinda control the predators but not people and I'm glad we can't .

Best you can do is improve your land best you can and hope that 3 year old buck you let go makes it two more years. You hope all the does are not killed .if you have a few maybe you kill one or two for meat.

So here’s a basic model of what I’m talking about with road mortality…….Let’s say you have one big plantation surrounded by lots of smaller properties that people are hunting varying from 5 acres to 25 acres to 250 to 2500…….. The larger subset area is defined by the major highways and interstate.

What I’m suggesting is that within this whole subset area you have a redistribution of doe groups that occurs when resources become limited in any given location. If the large plantation completely quits shooting does tomorrow, then when resources bottle neck in late winter and during fawning on the plantation….. social conflict will cause there to be an outward emigration of the subordinate doe groups onto the surrounding properties looking to fill in the gaps created by the does the surrounding hunter’s shoot……..This creates a doe “expansion” emanating from the plantation. Now lets assume that most everyone on the smaller properties are shooting does and holding their populations to well under capacity. ……Some clubs may shoot a lot of their does and create lots of openings…..You’ve probably all heard the guy who says that…. “we shoot does every year and they just seem to show right back up”……Those people likely have someone in the area who’s property is kicking out immigrants to them. I hope I’m using the immigrant/emigrant correctly. You get the point though.

In this scenario there are very few if any of our smaller properties creating any “expansion” themselves like the plantation because hunter harvest is preventing it……Road mortality would be fairly low because overall expansion is low…….Now lets change the variables in the model and let’s start having the smaller properties one by one stop shooting does as well……As the smaller properties stop having vacancies for the emigrating does to seek out…..the “turnover” for the area begins occurring more and more on the perimeter highways……Does that start trying to use both sides of a highway don’t last long……..this is where road mortality is creating the holes the subordinate females are seeking out…..it creates a much higher turnover around the edges than in the center……And you’re basically ending with the deer trying to push outwards a couple times a year and the road mortality eventually moderating the push and eventually the expansion settles out.

Of course this is not going to be as cut and dry as our model in all real world situations but there’s similar concepts playing out in most just depending on the setup.

I think he was kidding CNC…

And I don’t think you need 50k acres to manage deer. You can do it on 1000. It’s been done for years.

That right there my friends has had me rolling for several minutes 😂😂

That’s just flat out awesome CNC. Funniest thing I’ve seen on here in weeks.

Well played Sir!

I guess I was just too high strung.

Good one CNC.

One of the best movies of all time

I didn’t read through 5 pages of responses but I will tell you what the highly educated and professional biologists that worked with us told us on the subject when we had to report this info for our management program. First off, in a healthy herd virtually all of the breeding age does will have milk. There can be a few exceptions, but very few. Secondly, you can’t always look and tell if they are dry or not. They may look dry but cutting into the bag will show the truth. A lot of people just look and declare them dry when a cutting will show otherwise. If you do have a doe that is truly dry, in a healthy herd she should be so old that she is beyond breeding age. That is the perfect cull deer.

If you have more than a rare dry mature doe, you’ve got problems. I’m not claiming to be an expert but we did work with experts and we did have an overpopulation problem and worked hard for a number of years to get it in check.

It sounds to me most everyone agrees most everyone will shoot a nice 2 or 3 year old buck, so why not increase the buck limit and lower the doe limit? The whole has to have 4 points on one side doesn't help either. I have mature 6 points that need to go. I have one buck that's well over 4 years old that has a spike on one side and a split spike at the pedicile at the other.

Especially if what CNC is saying is true. The old deer I mentioned above I had pics of in 2019, and haven't gotten one until a couple weeks ago. Where has he been? I bet he is at least 6 or 7 years old.

Isn't there a better way to judge your herd? Like weighing the deer you kill and aging them? Seems like if you have 110 to 120 pound doe's you don't have a whole bunch, but if all of them are 90 pounds, maybe thinning them out would be good.

I'm not going to think I have to many deer until my fields stay mowed.

Lockjaw, that’s the problem. Or at least one of them. People are too quick to shoot any buck, regardless of age. What would allowing more buck harvest and less doe harvest accomplish in a scenario like we’re discussing in this thread? Buck harvest is already too high. That’s why there’s a skewed sex ratio in favor of females. You have TWO bucks of choice that allow you to kill any two bucks you want. Only one has to have 4 on one side. The regulation change was designed to protect more bucks and recruit them into the population to correct the sex ratio problem that plagued a good chunk of the state years ago. Increasing buck harvest and protecting more does is counterproductive to improving reproductive success.

Look I'm not a biologist. What I am though is a guy with a keen eye and a scientific mind.

So what I do know is I saw more deer in the 80's when we had doe season and unlimited buck limits or 1 per day. Or you could use archery and kill a doe.

Now days, in most all clubs, if a doe walks out on a greenfield, it gets shot. So pretty soon there are no doe's walking out on a greenfield. That means bucks aren't either. In the 80's a lot of people killed bucks off green fields because they weren't shooting doe's.

So hunters get frustrated and do what? Start walking around and f'n up the woods. They go the deer aren't coming out in fields so I need to find where they are. In the 80's you could sit on a field and count on it, deer would come in every evening like clockwork.

So now we have trained all the doe's to be more nocturnal, just like bucks. They hole up in stuff we can't hunt, and make sure until dark, and then come out. The only deer that consistently moves during daylight is a spike or button head. Most clubs are 6pt or better, and a shooter isn't going to be hot after a spike.


Perhaps that's over simplified, or maybe I'm smoking crack, but all I know for sure is I don't see deer like I used to and it's getting worse not better. And the culprit as far as I'm concerned is the doe a day limit.

Lockjaw ,,, you know what happened ,,,,,, trophy management! !!!!!!

Lockjaw, reason people are not seeing the deer also is because they have stopped walking the woods . Now hunters plant a little spot of grass or fill up a feeder and set on it hoping some thing comes in .

Let's not forget safe places for the deer . Ha ha ha lol

And that's what kids learn

Lockjaw, that’s a pressure problem. That can only be regulated by hunters, not the state of AL. We kill almost all our does on food plots and still see/kill bucks on them too. Saw a 4 year old buck yesterday on one in 70 degree heat during the December lull. How you approach a stand, how often, how you exit, and what you do while you’re there has way more to do with how deer respond than shooting a couple a year off each plot.

I’ve been trying to get people to understand this for years and few are listening. Long term sustainable populations of deer like a lot of ppl experienced in the 80s and 90s is not reality. That was reality then when deer were expanding and does were protected. Also, coyotes were relatively new on the scene. Once deer expanded to every available acre in AL, habitats changed, and native browse was stunted from increasing populations, the herds of today can not go back where they once were. I see browse lines on every single property I visit. No exceptions. That means deer are consuming most of the available browse. I’ve worked with a couple of properties on hunting strategies to limit pressure and they’ve seen a very noticeable increase in hunter satisfaction and success. The population hasn’t changed one bit. How they move in daylight has just from some simple changes.