Spare the does?

[LivinADream]

Survey to determine population should be a requirement of your wildlife plan. If your goal is to increase the deer herd, harvest few does ,if any. If your goal is to decrease the herd, harvest more.




If you can estimate how many does are utilizing your property you can then determine the percentage of does to remove. With average fawn recruitment , a good rule of thumb is 20% - 25% of does to stabilize a population. For example, if you estimate there are 5 does using the property and you want to stabilize the herd, shoot 1.

If you want to grow the herd shoot none…or shoot a doe fawn. Yearling does are less likely to successfully raise fawns of their own anyway. We try to take both mature does and doe fawns.

Your second paragraph has got me a bit confused. What do you mean by "a good rule of thumb is 20%-25% of does to stabilize a population"?? Are you saying you need to remove 20%-25% if fawn recruitment is average?

The example you provided also confused me. If 5 does are using the property, shoot 1. Was the property size mentioned and I missed it somewhere? This math doesn't add up for 100 acres vs 1000. Just trying to understand.

For what it's worth, I think I agree with you, but not certain that I'm interpreting it correctly.

[Saltyag15]

Good conversation, especially in regards to seeing fawns and shooting early. I don't know if I'm right or wrong, but my thoughts/methods seem to be in line with most of you posting here. The one caveat is the snorting, stomping ***** that we all know and love so much!

[Sika]

The target doe harvest depends on many variables including deer density, property size, habitat quality, sex ratio, and your deer management goals.
As mentioned you really need numbers to figure optimal harvest. A deer count so you can estimate deer per acre, ratio and fawn recruitment.
And yes when density goes up , fawn production goes down. Buck mortality goes up also for the same reasons - competition over resources.

[Hogmauler]

The property is only 22 wooded acres folks. Would be hard to manage that. And yes I didn’t understand they guys rational about shooting does that come off another property. He had killed a 170” off a small property and he made sense that does were your best buck attractant. And yes I agree with everything that folks have said. I don’t think there are that many resident deer on 22 acres though. I have a small pipeline that runs through it and the deer love it. There’s about 7 acres behind my stand that I never disturb during deer season

[Huntingfool]

The property is only 22 wooded acres folks. Would be hard to manage that. And yes I didn’t understand they guys rational about shooting does that come off another property. He had killed a 170” off a small property and he made sense that does were your best buck attractant. And yes I agree with everything that folks have said. I don’t think there are that many resident deer on 22 acres though. I have a small pipeline that runs through it and the deer love it. There’s about 7 acres behind my stand that I never disturb during deer season

truthfully in 22 acres killing does will not have much impact on you place - now if the entire area has too many does then each landowner taking some does out would help but that is a tall order to get neighbors to cooperate. I would not worry about taking out does out -

[Mule Skinner]

I heard one guy talking about shooting only does that jump the fence from neighboring properties.

How does one determine this in the first place?

Also, deer move, especially during the rut and on small places they may be hopping fences all the time.

[Texas452]

I'll play devils advocate here, in a couple of scenarios. One of which is only grounded in a healthy herd vs seeing more deer or attracting bucks. The other is just a thought in the opposite direction that may be 100% wrong.

1. I spend 90% of my time in a vehicle listening to habitat management podcasts from several different sources. Most of the podcasters(?) Do land evaluations, and 100% of them agree that ALMOST every single property they visit needs to kill does. It seems to me like a general consensus is about 1 per 50 to 100 acres. The reasoning behind this is available food per deer.

2. My thoughts, considering the above to be correct, is possibly fawn recruitment is suffering because the available food doesn't support the mothers need to make milk, therefore she either leaves the fawn stranded for her own survival, or the fawns are just malnourished to the point they can't survive the harsh conditions that our hot dry summers bring. If the mothers go into the birthing season very healthy due to less competition for food, they will raise stronger healthier fawns.

I listen to some of that, then you watch a hunting show and deer are everywhere with lots of does.
mourning part of the country has a lot of food for deer to eat, plus we feed them, but they don’t hit the feeders real hard.