My own deer harvest numbers/seen/killed last 6 years

[Crazinamatese]

Can man really control a free range animal through "management"? I guess the question Im trying to make is that how does anyone know they really are making an impact on a deer herd by killing a doe or two here and a buck or two there? A free range Whitetail has a core area up to 5 miles. How can anyone really keep tabs on what the deer herd looks like on their properties every year?

[Stanley]

First, its good you keep track of activity like that, you are right it is fun to look back at that stuff years later and you absolutely will not regret it. I have kept a detailed hunting log since 2006 and wish I had started earlier.

Second, you can probably count around half the antlerless deer as fawns, as of those approximately half are button bucks I think.

As far as overpopulation goes, you can tell pretty easily if an area is overpopulated if there are severe browse lines in the timber, meaning very little browsable underbrush 0-4' off the ground. Even though we hunters don't particularly like it, in the northern latitudes hard winters are natures way of correcting overpopulation.

Also, a note on buck to doe ratios...people are right in suggesting a small area with a ratio of 1:1 does not make hunting better, all the bucks will be next door if there are a bunch of does over there. Going even further, I think there is some literature out there that suggests an artificially high ratio is actually not good for the deer herd health (no offense to "QDM" proponents who feel otherwise), resulting in a lot of beat up and run down bucks (higher winter mortality) after such a highly competitive rut. My hunch is that a 1:2 or so buck to doe ratio in farm country is a pretty darn good happy medium. Way up north with only a few deer per square mile, a 1:1 ratio isn't a big deal because there are so few deer to begin with.

It all depends on the time of the year. After hunting season the ratios are way different and skewed than before. After the hunting season when 75% of the bucks have been killed off I would suspect the ratios could easily be 25 does to 1 buck. The only way to right those numbers is for bucks to be born. It is a double edged sword more does = more bucks. If you kill 1 buck and 5 does (buck producers) you have killed how many bucks? For me I have no idea what the ratios are (I'm not alone) in the areas I hunt. I do know for sure it's no fun hunting where the deer numbers are very low.

[BigHills BuckHunter]

Stan...with the type of hunters we have around us the Qdm people...the ones that pass yearlings and even a few trophy hunters who purchase leased land around us do you really think we have a 75% kill rate of bucks? I'm just curious.

I'm guessing it's around 40% but like I said that's a guess.

[Southern Man]

Can man really control a free range animal through "management"? I guess the question Im trying to make is that how does anyone know they really are making an impact on a deer herd by killing a doe or two here and a buck or two there? A free range Whitetail has a core area up to 5 miles. How can anyone really keep tabs on what the deer herd looks like on their properties every year?

No I don't think so. I would think control is the key. If you had absolute control of a large enough property you might do some good, but if you don't control a large enough area, and the hunters on it, I think it's pointless.

Rather than focusing on buck / doe ratios, I think time would be better spent on improving nutrition and cover. You can still grow big bucks in a herd where the does far outnumber the bucks, as long as the herd isn't at carrying capacity of the land it lives on. And that still takes some kind of control of the area and especially the hunters.

I agree with Stanley that the more does you have, the more bucks you'll have. It's a percentage thing, makes perfect sense. Where the most does are, that's where the bucks will go most of the time. And again as long as the area is not overpopulated, you'll grow bigger and more bucks. That is as long as you don't shoot em too young or too many.

[Southern Man]

I started keeping gun hunting stats for my hunting party in 2008 and have done so ever since.

Western Jackson county Wisconsin.
7 hunters in my party

2008: Not much for stats I wrote down I saw one deer opening day sitting all day. 42 deer seen all year between everyone.
This was right after they took out EAB in my hunting zone.

2009: 64 deer seen in my hunting party

2010: 101 total deer seen. 16 bucks 85 doe
Killed 5 doe 3 bucks.

2011: 105 total deer seen. 21 bucks 84 doe
Killed 5 doe 1 buck

2012: 126 total seen 33 bucks 93 doe
Killed 6 doe 1 buck

2013: 180 total seen 31 bucks 149 doe
Killed 9 doe 3 bucks.

Is this buck to doe ratio unhealthy for the population? It seems we have a very healthy herd though. NOTE: All fawns were included in the doe category so some of the does are actually bucks, its just hard to tell if its a buck or doe fawn you have seen while in the woods.

It's fun to keep up with but not a good way to get a good idea of herd population, or ratios. A while back James Kroll detailed a way to get a pretty good idea of buck / doe ratios & numbers using feeding stations and trail cameras. The number of stations depended how big your property was. I have done something similar to this and it gave me a wealth of info. I'll see if I can find where he wrote it.

[headgear]

Stan...with the type of hunters we have around us the Qdm people...the ones that pass yearlings and even a few trophy hunters who purchase leased land around us do you really think we have a 75% kill rate of bucks? I'm just curious.

I'm guessing it's around 40% but like I said that's a guess.

That number does seem kind of high, even in places where guys are shooting every legal deer they see.