Goat killer, you have to understand in today's society education has overtaken common sense. I'm uneducated but completely understand and agree, there's no possible way to get more deer by shooting more deer. One biological fact that is being overlooked is that nature attempts to correct the ratio on its own. So if there is a given area where there are to many does mother nature will have more doe fawns than buck fawns. Unfortunately mother nature doesn't do this according to roads and property lines! So if a given group of does has a majority buck birth ratio but you keep killing young bucks, no gain it that area. If you shoot alot of does the same is true just opposite. The bottom line is, want more deer shoot less deer, want older deer shoot older deer!
I don’t think I’ve ever seen ppl who can take things out of context any better than the folks on ALdeer. 😂
The point I was making is that sex ratios heavily favoring females leads to lower reproductive success and physical fitness than herds with a more balanced ratio. Those are facts. Not academic opinions. Facts backed up by every study ever conducted on deer breeding behaviors. Correcting the sex ratio by whatever means needed will begin to correct the problem. My recommendation would be a three sided approach including improving habitat condition, lowering doe numbers and NOT shooting any bucks for a couple of seasons. I did not say shoot all the does. I did not say shoot most of the does. I said shoot some. If 30 deer are piling into one food plot in the evenings that is a sign of poor habitat condition around them. They need more options. They need more browse. Improve the habitat. Make it attractive to male deer. If it’s occupied and dominated by social units of antlerless deer with limited cover and food availability it’s not going to attract bucks at all, except during estrous. Then they’ll leave and go back from where they came. Leaving that unantlered population on the landscape with piss poor habitat is not going to fix a thing. That’s not academics. That’s not schooling. That’s deer management.
