Aldeer.com Forums Alabama Deer Talk Serious Deer Talk Forum Deer Harvest per Lease Size

Nobody said anything about these being clubs. More folks than you may realize lease 500-1000 acres with only a couple folks hunting it. Me included

A better question would be how many you let walk. We only kill mature deer. 400 acres 4 bucks, 4does. Let 17 racked bucks walk. If you want big bucks only kill big bucks.

Yeah I let at least 5 decent bucks walk this past year because I know they will be better this year. I try to kill mature deer. I do however like to kill 2.5yr old spikes. Killed two heavy ones last year that definitely should have had more bone. Only other deer I killed was a old old 9 point that I got pics from the previous lease owner. Saw twice as many bucks as I did does for sure. The club killed a total of 3 does and 7 bucks. It was our first year on the lease and we have already seen many more does on camera this year.

Well dog hunting is illegal in Randolph county and I'm glad it is. If you want to know the truth, we have a 3 doe per member limit and only 5 members. The only people that hunted enough to amount to anything was me and another member that hunts with his 12 year old son. The twelve year old killed 2 does during the youth hunt and opted to hold out for a good buck for the rest of the season. That twelve year old sat in a shooting house one evening and had 12 does in the food plot and elected to not pull the trigger. The remaining 4 does in the total were killed by myself, 2 during bow season and 2 in one morning towards the end of season because no one else was killing any and we needed some taken out. That was after a phone call in the stand to the club president while the deer were standing in front of me. All the bucks I saw got the pass. Now if I was in a slobbering redneck, bring the beer cooler to the shooting house hunting club I could have killed 60 or 70 deer last year but the OP asked how many deer were killed, not how many were seen.

Choctaw county
12000 acres
85-90 bucks
90-100 does

I have been in this club for 10 years and this seems to be about the average numbers per year.

That's a lot of bucks being killed around the state! I like the 3 buck limit b/c everyone can kill what they want, but I'd be curious to know how many of these bucks are 3.5 or older. We only kill 2-3 per season, but we let a bunch of racked bucks walk and we only have a few people hunting. The club that used to lease our farm generally killed 10-15 bucks per season and that was way too many on 1500 acres in our part of the state.

I think I remember BSK saying one time that you could harvest somewhere around 30% of your total buck population each year and still be ok. Am I remembering that correctly BSK? This is managing using the method of controlling total buck harvest.....not worrying so much about age classes. If enough bucks total survive, then you advance enough into the next age class that ins not really as important anymore to focus on just killing older age deer.

Everything depends on your local fawn recruitment rate. Basically, to hold a deer population stable over time, you must remove the same number of adult deer (by all forms of mortality) as the number of fawns that survive to their first birthdays (fawn recruitment rate). That can be a huge number or small number, depending on fawn production and survival.

You can see are numbers here, but around 2007 we combined 2 leases and went from 1300 acreas to 2700, but the numbers didn't go up that much. What did go up was pines.

http://www.ponderosahuntingclub.com/harvest.html

Location and pressure play very important roles in harvest numbers. We are fortunate where we are. VERY low harvest and extremely low pressure all around us. We do have to keep our pressure low to avoid pushing mature deer to these sanctuaries. But, it allows us to have way more opportunities than normal for our lease size.

Seems like killing almost 2 does for each buck is the norm at a lot of places these days. I don't know what happens when that is continued for an extended period of time I do know where I we age going to find out in the next few years.

So BSK, what your saying is that in order for us to know how many bucks (or deer in general) that would be appropriate for us to harvest, then it would be important for us to have an idea of fawn recruitment. Correct?

Fawn recruitment can be monitored using trail cams, hunter observation data, and lactation rates. What do you think would be an acceptable fawn recruitment rate for most of us?

Most modestly equipped people dont lease that much land for 2 or 3 people generally so I assumed with larger tracts of land we were talking about a club. I still wouldnt lease 1000 ac @ 12.50 or 15.00 an acre to kill a handful of deer between 2 or 3 people. I kill 3 to 5 every year on 100 ac and my son kills 3 to 4. We let most of the younger deer walk and harvest mature deer. On any given day I typically see 5 to 20 deer and let a lot of them walk.
I am curious what your statistics are?

Sumter County
400 acres
2 Bucks
12 does

We let a lot of young bucks walk.

Monroe County
1500 acres last year( we just let 260 go)
11 bucks 6pt or better
16 does
24 hogs

My little 31 acres I bought we have killed around 7 each year for the last 4 years. 5 bucks. Some mature and others kids first deer and they still keep my 2-3 acre gf mowed flat.

800 acres
Chambers county
23 does
5 bucks

We had to emphasize some doe harvesting this past year. Way too many.

Mobile county (personal property) Last year
100 acres
0 doe
0 buck
(Club property)
1500 acres
4 does
8 bucks

Last Year:

12000 Acres
48 does
56 bucks


60+ Gobblers
28 Hogs

Lease #1 - 270 acres Winston County
1 buck
4 does

Lease #2 - 500 acres (new lease never hunted) Fayette County
Bucks - ?
Does - ?