Buck to Doe Ratio

[headgear]

As far as I know, he is right that it is basically impossible for there to ever be a ratio of greater than 3:1 does to antlered bucks PRESEASON. They are always born 1:1. Do the math. If all the antlered bucks in an area are slaughtered (extreme example) during the season and all the does are left they will still give birth 1:1, assuming they were bred. If they weren't you have bigger problems than buck:doe ratio. So take 100 does and 0 anltered bucks post season. They will give birth to 100 fawns (low recruitment figure, mortality etc), 50 doe, 50 buck. Thats 150 does to 50 bucks for the next season. Granted some fawns get shot, but usually nondiscriminatly both bucks/does. It would take some strange occurances to get worse than 3:1. You can do these figures over and over and its just not really possible. I've heard lots of guys cry about 20:1 or whatever, but it's just not possible, PRESEASON. after the guns come out, yeah it gets bad. Observed ratio's are often scewed if you are not where the batchlor groups are.

This is what I have read before and mathamatically I beleve this is close to correct. Theoretically anyway. Even if some does and young fawns don't get bread some does have 2 or 3 fawns to help make up some of those numbers. Plenty of fawns get taken out by predators, weather, or various other factors might push that 3-1 ratio closer to 4-1 which all kind of makes sense if you are a book worm.

I think the BIG PROBLEM with this line of thinking is that most of the males are fawns so when you take them out of the equation you can get some very scewed buck/doe ratios. The older age class you get to the worse it gets.

[JakeJD]

Okay so following up on headgear's thought, I created another measure of the sex ratio called the "perceived" sex ratio. Basically, this is the pre-season does (before 25% mortality) plus all the fawns from the previous year who are now 6 months old (again 25% mortality among fawns) divided by the antlered bucks (1.5 y/o). The "perceived" sex ratio comes out to 5.7:1.

[Uncle Lou]

Great point guys about the buck fawns. That adds to the perceived buck to doe ratio appearing to be skewed below what it actually is.

[headgear]

Great point guys about the buck fawns. That adds to the perceived buck to doe ratio appearing to be skewed below what it actually is.

Yep it's one of those statistics that while it may be correct and sounds fair it doesn't do us much good as mature buck hunters or give an accurate count across all age classes. Just looking at my herd you could probably say the doe/buck ratio is in the 3/1 or 4/1 range if you count all fawns and 1.5 bucks. Now if you are just looking at deer 2.5 and older I have no idea what the actual numbers are but somewhere in the 5/1 to 10/1 probably covers it. I don't think its worse than 10/1 but on some tracks of land that is a very real possibility.

[gjs4]

Just remember DNR/DEC/ETC is relative to a whole area/population and not necessarily conduscive to a piece of property....same as density...use your own observations as a basis for where youre at....too many does is a bad deal if youre after mature bucks....some areas of NY (Here) are 9:1 due to gun hunters only shoting small bucks..