The biologist who came out on my lease said kill 15 doe's to start. She was a state biologist. Personally I don't see how you make that sort of assessment by simply driving around the property.
1050 acre's. To sustain that, I have to have at least 15 doe's remaining who have twins, and none of the doe fawns get eaten by a yote or die from something else. Nature is not going to skew the births of the male or female sex beyond 48 to 52 per Dr Grant Woods.
So the bottom line is you can only kill a certain number of doe'on an ongoing basis before you negatively impact the population. And that requires more data than an hour on my lease.
I agree no one can make that assessment in an hour. She probably just applied the state average ratio to your property. I’m guessing she assumed it was 3:1 or 4:1. If you use that ratio at 45 deer a square mile then 15 does a year is sustainable. Especially if you make an effort to only shoot 4.5+ year old bucks.
1050 acres= 1.6 sq miles 1.6 x 45 deer = 72 deer 72 @ 3:1 ratio = 54 does 54 - 15 shot = 39 does left
By the time they have fawns at 50% females you are right back where you started. Of course there are other factors in there but that’s the jest of it.
I would agree with this to a certain degree. I don't think I have 45 deer per square mile. I think its more like 30. Game check says 380 bucks versus 566 doe's were killed in Shelby Co last season. So basically 41% of the deer on my lease are bucks, and 59% are doe's.
Using your numbers above (30 deer/sq mi) I have 48 deer on my lease. 28 are doe's. If I kill 15, that leaves 13 to breed. What I can say that tends to back up the lower number per mile is I don't see more than 4 or 5 deer on a field. If I was seeing 8 to 10, I would feel better. I have green fields no one ever sees a deer on. They use them at night, but because of the way my lease was set up, to many fields are on the main road, and its worse because I have 1 entrance, not 2.
We put some lanes in on skidder rows this fall, and I have a couple fields I need to expand. The ones I was able to lime aren't just killing it this year, its going to take a year or two for them to get the PH up where it needs to be. I think the thinning will help us, but it will still be a couple more years before we see that too. They clearcut parts of the lease next to me, so he will be a deer factory in a couple years. That should help us as well.
