High for population

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High for population

Unread postby TNstalker » Wed Jun 01, 2016 3:37 am

So I'm interested to see what some of y'all see with your bucks in high doe populations. Do they still travel a good distance for women or will they hang close to there core? I'm more talking when there is several doe's in at one time. I know this question can have many variables to it. Seems to be here in TN the older bucks stay closer to home than range far a wide. This will vary in areas of TN. Now when I say high doe it's no problem to go to the right stand an see 15 doe's an a buddy hunt 100 yards from u see 12 more an only see 2 of the same deer u saw.

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Re: High for population

Unread postby Wlog » Wed Jun 01, 2016 4:11 am

If the buck population is low then there isn't much competition. The Bucks won't have far to travel to find the next doe. All depends on buck to doe ratio.

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Re: High for population

Unread postby TNstalker » Wed Jun 01, 2016 11:24 pm

Buck to doe ratio is up there. I think last I saw it was 4-1 doe to buck or more. I know probably a lot of folks don't see fights but the big thing u really ever see is deer with busted up tines. Might thoughts are plenty of food an women why roam far an wide don't have to.

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Re: High for population

Unread postby mainebowhunter » Thu Jun 02, 2016 12:03 am

Its one of the reasons I left SE OH. The place was crazy with deer. BUT buck to do ratio was so far out of whack...calling/decoying flat out did not work. We would watch a buck travel along a shelf...call to him. Get no response.

The bucks just were not all that aggressive. We used to see 75 - 100 deer in back of the farmers house, majority of them were does.
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Re: High for population

Unread postby TNstalker » Thu Jun 02, 2016 1:45 pm

Yeah they are not that aggressive here. I guess my thoughts are if they don't have to travel much an u can pin down a few beds an when they use them still may not be a crazy idea to kill them even around their bed during the rut. I know if they don't move a lot it makes it hard but if u know where an when my thoughts are it can make it a little easier. I need to figure away to test this lol!

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Re: High for population

Unread postby Mibowfreak » Thu Jun 02, 2016 11:38 pm

Our ratio is bad here. The most mature bucks here, are not traveling far. Honestly, I have come to believe that some of these older bucks, dont go iut chasing does at all. The does know where these bucks are and will come seek them out sometimes.

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Re: High for population

Unread postby Bigburner » Fri Jun 03, 2016 1:32 am

A doe to buck ratio of 4:1 is pretty low. Actually that's excellent. I bet your ratio is way higher If you are seeing a lack of typical rut behavior especially the aggressive chasing part or the lack of mature buck activity. Public land is usually way out of whack. I know around here its 15-20:1 down from like 30:1 or more. Mostly because of EHD and a liberal bag limit on antlerless deer. I hate to say it but that was a blessing in disguise for the doe population. You want to talk about zero sign of rut activity with that 30 number. All the trophy managed property you see the industry hunters being outfitted on are like 2:1. That's why they can stick a decoy out in the middle of a field and have a 2.5 yro bristle up to it with half his rack missing. I'll drop a bag of money in your lap if you can do that on public around here.
High doe buck ratios are hard to get down on public b/c everyone shoots the first antlered deer they see in most places. Antler restrictions help get them down as well.
But I agree its hard to get a mature buck on its feet. There are a lot of variables on any given day but I usually see them during their normal late afternoon early evening pattern when it comes to pushing and chasing. I see allot of younger bucks doing the mid-day cruising. A few years back the year we had EHD I had a 150" 8 pt. I had my eye on chasing with 4 other bucks sounded like a fright train with all of them grunting after her at around 11 am and I think it was mostly b/c of the lack of deer. The woods were dead that year and I think the lack of abundant does made the stakes higher. Plus lets face it, a hot doe is a hot doe and it's usually like an explosion when ones around.
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Re: High for population

Unread postby Tufrthnails » Fri Jun 03, 2016 1:56 am

This is something I harp on constantly in FL. I actually left a lease do to this, which could have been an awesome lease except for two things.
#1 They ran deer dogs on the lease
#2 They didn't allow does to be killed. They would give a few out for the kids, but none for adults (which is seriously hypocritical since I seen plenty killed because the dog hunter thought it had a rack and shot it crossing the road.

I still hunted an had pretty good luck hunting the wma where they couldn't run dogs next door, but it still wasn't very good. I never saw a deer over a basket rack 8pt killed in 5 years there. I never personally saw a deer over a 6pt on that lease property that is 54k acres.
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Re: High for population

Unread postby JoeRE » Fri Jun 03, 2016 7:37 am

Locally I think I have seen more intense rutting activity in the last 10-15 years as the deer herd was reduced in eastern Iowa. I would say it went from somewhere between 3:1 and 2:1 down to 1.5:1. There are localized areas where there are a lot more does, and in those areas I just don't see any cruising in the first two weeks of November by bucks, at least any buck older than a yearling.


Bigburner wrote:[glow=red]A doe to buck ratio of 4:1 is pretty low. Actually that's excellent. I bet your ratio is way higher If you are seeing a lack of typical rut behavior especially the aggressive chasing part or the lack of mature buck activity. Public land is usually way out of whack. I know around here its 15-20:1 down from like 30:1 or more.[/glow]Mostly because of EHD and a liberal bag limit on antlerless deer. I hate to say it but that was a blessing in disguise for the doe population. You want to talk about zero sign of rut activity with that 30 number. All the trophy managed property you see the industry hunters being outfitted on are like 2:1. That's why they can stick a decoy out in the middle of a field and have a 2.5 yro bristle up to it with half his rack missing. I'll drop a bag of money in your lap if you can do that on public around here.
High doe buck ratios are hard to get down on public b/c everyone shoots the first antlered deer they see in most places. Antler restrictions help get them down as well.
But I agree its hard to get a mature buck on its feet. There are a lot of variables on any given day but I usually see them during their normal late afternoon early evening pattern when it comes to pushing and chasing. I see allot of younger bucks doing the mid-day cruising. A few years back the year we had EHD I had a 150" 8 pt. I had my eye on chasing with 4 other bucks sounded like a fright train with all of them grunting after her at around 11 am and I think it was mostly b/c of the lack of deer. The woods were dead that year and I think the lack of abundant does made the stakes higher. Plus lets face it, a hot doe is a hot doe and it's usually like an explosion when ones around.



I have heard that buck to doe ratios are usually way overestimated, meaning its almost unheard of for a deer herd to be worse than 4 or 5 to 1 and most are 3 to 1 or better, which is still pretty out of whack. Just wondering what your take is on that based on your comments.
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Re: High for population

Unread postby Bigburner » Fri Jun 03, 2016 8:20 am

I know what we have researched locally on State Land prior to 2012 and what we had researched after our EHD outbreak through camera surveys and IR flights. Also boots on the ground in just mortality counts. For every dead buck we found we found between 20-30 dead does. I know that's not hard and fast science but there was an abrupt skew in the numbers. plus prior to 2012 there were no antler restrictions so our age class distribution was shot. a mess of i.5 year old in the beginning of the season and then a few would slip through without getting killed and it resulted in a really bad reverse J shape curve. A lot of small bucks and very few in the middle age class and even fewer in the upper age class, say 4.5 plus. I think that pretty natural to what we all see. Thats why we talk about mature bucks so much. I don't know about you, but I've lost track of how many times I've been pinned by a young buck right when I want to pack up and head out after shooting light. I'm not going to mess with it but Joe blow is going to brain the thing the first chance he gets. Also, The public has low per sq. mi densities but the surrounding private would be loaded pretty natural as well. We did some interesting radio collar studies in 2010-11 with some does mostly to appease the farmers that were complaining of crop damage. Long and short of it was that the deer would disappear as soon as hunting season rolled around and nobody could kill them. We just proved to them that the deer didn't leave the property at all the just staged 100 yards inside the woods until the field edge hunter in the box blind with his wind blowing into the bedding area would leave on his 4-wheeler that he parked next to the blind. Go Figure. Some of these guys were getting 60 -80 does rolling out into these bean fields at night. last year one got hit by a car that was estimated at 3.5 at the time of tagging. So she was 9.5 when she was struck. That proves one of two things either old does are as smart as old bucks and nobody shoots does on public or private unless you force their hand. I remember reading some research somewhere of a similar study and they had a doe that was 13 yro. Its like a needle in a hay stack shooting a 5-6.5 old buck but that's a ludicrously old deer.
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Re: High for population

Unread postby Hawthorne » Fri Jun 03, 2016 8:36 am

My part of southern Michigan the ratio is way out of whack. I see probably 7 does to 1 buck. The older bucks 3.5 and older don't cruise around here. They use rut staging areas in the thick. I sew quite a few 2 year olds cruising during rut tho. I had a doe that got hit by a car on my property. I cut her lower jaw off and aged. Her teeth were wore down to her gums.

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Re: High for population

Unread postby mainebowhunter » Fri Jun 03, 2016 8:47 am

Bigburner wrote:A doe to buck ratio of 4:1 is pretty low. Actually that's excellent. I bet your ratio is way higher If you are seeing a lack of typical rut behavior especially the aggressive chasing part or the lack of mature buck activity. Public land is usually way out of whack. I know around here its 15-20:1 down from like 30:1 or more. Mostly because of EHD and a liberal bag limit on antlerless deer. I hate to say it but that was a blessing in disguise for the doe population. You want to talk about zero sign of rut activity with that 30 number. All the trophy managed property you see the industry hunters being outfitted on are like 2:1. That's why they can stick a decoy out in the middle of a field and have a 2.5 yro bristle up to it with half his rack missing. I'll drop a bag of money in your lap if you can do that on public around here.
High doe buck ratios are hard to get down on public b/c everyone shoots the first antlered deer they see in most places. Antler restrictions help get them down as well.
But I agree its hard to get a mature buck on its feet. There are a lot of variables on any given day but I usually see them during their normal late afternoon early evening pattern when it comes to pushing and chasing. I see allot of younger bucks doing the mid-day cruising. A few years back the year we had EHD I had a 150" 8 pt. I had my eye on chasing with 4 other bucks sounded like a fright train with all of them grunting after her at around 11 am and I think it was mostly b/c of the lack of deer. The woods were dead that year and I think the lack of abundant does made the stakes higher. Plus lets face it, a hot doe is a hot doe and it's usually like an explosion when ones around.


I think a lot of it is regionally based. I have hunted public land in NE and KS and have had fantastic results with decoys and calling. AND terrible luck with it on private land in OH. And nowhere do I hunt managed ground. Many parts of the PA, NJ, MD, DE, OH seem to have an over abundance of does and really high deer densities.
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Re: High for population

Unread postby mainebowhunter » Fri Jun 03, 2016 8:50 am

So I guess part of my observation is...IS it regionally based?? or is it based on the way the state manages the deer herd? I rarely EVER see deer densities in KS or NE like I have seen in OH.
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Re: High for population

Unread postby Bigburner » Fri Jun 03, 2016 11:07 am

I definitely agree its regional. I would also contest its cultural and a shift is finally taking place that shooting does is ok both herd health wise and man-card wise. I can tell you that the states that manage by zones I think have a way better system worked out for herd management. Unlike my state for instance that blankets everything from zone to zone. It drives me nuts when they apply the same management schemes in urban areas with 100 plus deer/sq.mi. with areas on public that have the habitat to hold more deer but still hover around 15-20 per sq. mi. I know in my state, pressure from farmers, politicians and the insurance companies dictate deer management. Not science. So its become more reactive than pro-active. Luckily for me on the state ground I manage I don't have to go through legislation to change herd management practices unlike our state F&W agency areas.
I've lived and hunted in the Adirondacks and West Virginia as well as my home state really extensively and its pretty evident the difference between the areas as far as deer density and ratios. busting your rear on snow shoes for miles on end looking for a track in Franklin County NY for a whole season and not seeing squat is a reality :lol:
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Re: High for population

Unread postby purebowhunting » Fri Jun 03, 2016 12:09 pm

mainebowhunter wrote:So I guess part of my observation is...IS it regionally based?? or is it based on the way the state manages the deer herd? I rarely EVER see deer densities in KS or NE like I have seen in OH.


You're comparing 2 extremely different habitats. After crops are removed the amount of habitat remaining in KS and NE is nothing compared to a wooded state like Ohio. Carrying capacity is dependent on winter habitat, even in areas with mild winters. This is why Wisconsin is such a good hunting state.


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