Ranch/Game Management Software

[Encinal]

I wasn’t really counting on the 1 year olds to have fawns but to be bred at 1 and a half and have a fawn at 2 and as far as the fawn crop for different age does you would need to enter your overall average. Ideally year to year you would have the same number of does unless you wanted to increase or decrease the size of your population. The thing that would change would be the number of does you harvested. The problem with this is that you cannot predict the future. If you knew that you were going to have a bad fawn crop in the Spring you could compensate by reducing the number of does you harvested the previous Fall. Also if you could predict a really good fawn crop you could harvest more does the previous Fall. That’s why this is like an ideal model and cannot be exact.

As far as my take on which does to harvest:
This is complicated because for the most part you are breeding for antler growth and does don’t have antlers and in a randomly mating population you don’t have a pedigree as a guideline to know which does have more favorable genetic and which do not. So unless you know which of your does have already produced bucks with favorable traits your best bet would be to harvest the oldest does, because if your genetics are improving each year, in general, the younger does will have better genetics.

You can't predict the future rainfall... but you can predict the future fawn crop contribution by doe age %

As far as shooting older does... because younger does have better genetics... that's all well and good... but what's the point of having better genetic fawn crops if they are going to be composed of far fewer deer? Better to work both sides... shoot younger does for several years then push a big influx of younger does into the population for the same effect but with more consistent fawn crops.

[Raideranch]

what's the point of having better genetic fawn crops if they are going to be composed of far fewer deer?

I wasn’t saying shoot all old does but if you need to shoot some does you would be better off shooting the oldest ones. Just my opinion.

[Encinal]

Here is my working model... you will have to dig into the guts of it to figure it out... I don't have a ton annotated on there...

I do note the death loss % I used for bucks on the different harvest strategy pages...

Deer Herd Models.xls

[Raideranch]

Looks like you have a pretty big operation. Are yall the ones that killed that 300 in. deer this past year?

[Encinal]

That Was this place yes. Of course... All these numbers are off because the only real numbers are 2008.

[SFAthumper]

Have you kept records since 2008..... i would think that the model could be adjusted with a running average on different percentages after collecting real numbers for 4-5 years in a row

[Raideranch]

That was an impressive deer.

Well if you do use this as a management tool don’t expect the number of does you have to be the same every year as Encinal pointed out. The number of does shown is the ideal number. If you have a bad winter kill or a bad fawn crop one year just know that the next you will want to harvest less does to keep the actual number close and vice versa for years better than normal.

[SFAthumper]

yep..... its all circumstantial... thats why the keeping of good records from year to year (as in your pre-season and pos-season census) helps out for making those management decisions that are solely number based.

[Raideranch]

SFA
On my version like you said it could be different sheets for different animals like a whitetail breeding program or different sheets for consecutive years. The first could be like the ideal sheet then the others could be consecutive sheets with actual numbers from year to year and I could adjust harvest values based off previous years. Not just does but say if you had a bad fawn crop one year it could show that you would harvest less bucks 5 or 6 years later based of your Buck Harvest Age. I was originally going to have a Fawn Crop %/Natural Mortality/% Diet fed/Young per Birth/all that info. for each animal but the sheet was getting too big so thats were the sheet for each animal would come in. Your Whitetail Fawn Crop might usually be better than your Blackbuck or something like that but this is based on averages so it might not matter that much. Lots of ways it could go and there are some other things that could be changed to make it more useful to other types of operations. If I update it I might just try to include everything we could think of.

[Encinal]

Let me clarify that we aren't a breeding operation... this was just thrown together to get me general trends based on traditional harvest practices adapted vs recommended.

I think you will probably find with your exotics vs whitetail that your model will fall apart as numbers of exotics go up... WTD don't compete very well... especially around feeding areas with larger cervids.

Also... Oryx etc and your more desert species will do better in drought conditions yadda yadda...

[SFAthumper]

Raideranch,

Thats exactly what i was thinking..... its good to be able to have a base model and to be able to manipulate it in the future with backing from yearly trends.

Encincal, you are correct about the competitiveness of whitetails vs exotics......


I have really enjoyed discussing these topics with you both

[Raideranch]

SFA, same here this has been interesting.

As far as compatibility of different species (competitiveness, aggression, etc…), thats probably a different topic all together.

[Raideranch]

I found an error in the Feed Cost if you used the Cattle section for something besides cows. I updated it and went ahead and changed it to a livestock section and added a few extra rows.

[Raideranch]

Any new thoughts? Have yall come across anything better? Thx

[Sippy]

I like this! thank you for posting.