If you really want to make wise management decisions then you need to zoom out to 30,000 ft and look at the larger subset area that you exist within…….The perimeter of a subset area will be defined by things like lakes, major habitat breaks, and major highways/interstates……..To what extent is the deer population maxed out within that subset???......THAT is what should be dictating the idea of how many does to shoot……If you start seeing assloads of road mortality on the perimeter, then it probably wouldn’t hurt to pull the trigger a little more on some places……If you start seeing zero road mortality…..then you might want to think about easing up…….A good example of this is that stretch of interstate up through TN and KY where road mortality is like a blood bath…..That’s a good indicator of a deer population likely pushing the limits of the habitat. Much of the road mortality is likely coming from subset areas trying to expand…….The highways and interstates are like mesh points that moderates the expansion when hunters don’t.


What if your property is the best fawning in the whole subset area and the biggest supporter of the bigger deer herd around you??? Shooting a bunch of the does from your property in this situation just limits the potential of the whole subset and limits the amount of bucks produced to fill up those secondary areas and eventually converge back on the high doe pop property come rut time. Deer management happens on a much bigger scale than how we often talk about it.