Aldeer.com Forums Alabama Deer Talk Serious Deer Talk Forum What if…..

Yes, even in our area, I’ve seen when our pines get 12+ yrs old that the deer are just not there until we thin again. Why would they be?
If you have a huge block of 12+ yr old pines, better hunt the edges.

His opinion is he wants more deer to track.

He will just post a roll eyes emoji.

I’m not trying to be right or wrong. Just generating thought. I visit a lot of properties in AL all over the state. Generally speaking, habitat is marginal at best, until habitat improvements begin. In our area timber markets are so bad improving habitat is difficult for many landowners. That leaves robust deer numbers in suboptimal conditions. A reduction wouldn’t necessarily be bad. I see a lot of areas with decreased body weights and antler scores for no other reason than there’s too many deer for the quality of habitat available.

Remember the don’t shoot does thing? That mind set is still there. You got to thin em out. I try to kill at least 2 doe a season but more could be shot. It’ll take over a year for me to eat the meat.

My opinion is that these deer numbers are being overestimated.......Even if game check is only getting half compliance, then that would mean that for example that Bullock Co is killing about 4000 bucks and 4000 does per year.........How many deer do you need to produce that type of yield if fawn recruitment is at lets say 50%

So correct my figgerin here if you think I missed something but….

In order to remain stable and come back next year with about the same herd…..we’re needing to replace 8,000 deer that we shot in Bullock Co…..Let’s go ahead and add another 4,000 on to that for other types of adult mortality...disease, road mortality, etc…....……So that’s 12,000 total fawns we need to produce for replacement…. If our fawn mortality is 50% then that means we need to make 24,000 fawns to end up with that 12,000……

How many females does it take to produce 24,000 fawns??......At a rate of 1.2 fawns per doe that would be roughly 20,000 does right??… …….For Bullock Co that would be 36 does per sq mile at a top end estimate and that’s probably being generous with the numbers ……It may realistically be closer to 16-18K does and 30 per sq mi….Again though unless someone sees some major flaws in the maff……Fawn mortality rates of course make a big difference as well as those other types of adult mortality……

What was the population before the 8000 deer were killed? Without this number, all other numbers mean zip.

Well……we know it was at least 8,000…..We can start there……

So if a county is killing 8,000 deer year after year then there has to be a base population of a minimum amount to support that “sustained yield”…… Correct?

Correct. But what is the number at the beginning of the season? If I had 40,000 pennies and you 8000. I still have 32,000 pennies. That’s leaves me with a LOT of Pennie’s and doesn’t hurt to bad. However if I only have 10,000 pennies and you take 8000 pennies,that don’t leave me very many and will hurt a lot. You have to a starting point. Without that we have no idea what’s happening to the herd. Good or bad. I agree 8000 deer killed probably ain’t real good for the population but we won’t know without the number we started with.

Correct if you only had 10,000 and we took 8,000 of them away then that would only leave us with 2000 left over………In that scenario even if every deer was 100% successful in reproducing then we wouldnt have enough deer left over to kill another 8,000 next year and the next…….So it would have to be more than 10,000……How many would it have to be to kill 8,000 every year

And that is not the case. You’re giving hunters way too much credit if you think they can remove 80% of a deer herd in one season.

CNC, the short answer is it depends on how many does you kill.

Some people want to see a lot of deer every time they hunt. Some people dont care about seeing a lot of deer, they just want to see big deer when they see them. Can’t please everyone.

Been 6 killed at my place early. Probably need 6 more gone, but I may hold off…

Well if we started out with 26,000 does and removed 4,000 through harvest and another 2,000 due to other causes…….that would leave us 20,000 does……..If those have 1.2 fawns each and half survive…..that’s 12,000 fawns…….half of those are does…..add that back and we get 26,000 does again.....I think we're getting closer now

Some of us remember hunting early after restocking in the mountains of NE Bama. If you saw 15-20 deer a season and killed a spike , you were ahead of most hunters . Someone would on rare occasion kill a 125" buck and you'd think it was a state record. Oh , after the first season , it was nearly 20 years before there were a FEW "doe days" , but you could kill a buck a day . I know what low deer numbers are , and we don't have them , not even close.

I have yet to see a deer eat pine needles.

I bet I'm low on that 1.2 fawn per doe rate I'm using......In a healthy population it's probably closer to 1.4 or better.......Correct?


I wonder what the true rate is for other causes of adult doe mortality.....Half of harvest is probably pretty high