Believe me when I say this. I am not a proponent of the propaganda of if you kill more does you will kill bigger bucks, I have personally never seen it come to fruition. But there has to be a number of does that you can kill each year without actually reducing the size of the heard. There are going to be a certain number of does recruited into the herd each year. If that year less than number die for whatever reason the size of the herd will not be reduced. There won't be as many as there would have been if none died but there is a number that can die each year without a heard reduction. The problem is figuring out how many are being recruited each year, and figuring out from that number how many you can shoot without causing a reduction if you don't want one. If you want an increase maybe you shouldn't shoot any. You also here a lot of people say if you kill a doe you took out 3 deer for next year. That is bull crap I would be willing to bet there is no where in AL that the recruitment rate is 2 fawns for every adult doe. There in part lies the problem a lot of people think every doe is gonna raise 2 fawns next year so you have to kill a bunch to keep population down. When in actuality from the studies I have read if your recruitment rate is .75-1 per adult doe you are doing great. While average is probabbly in the .50-.75 range and some places with a large predator problem may be in the .25-.50 range or lower. I think there are a lot of people that understand recruitment rates. If you are on the low side of those recruitment rates you can not kill very many does or your population will go down and go down in a hurry. And may go down enough to where your recruitment rate falls to near 0 then you have the problem of your herd not being able to recover even if you shoot no does. Just my .02.

What I don't understand is where in the world do all of those 1.5 - 3-5 year old bucks go that we let walk every year. Maybe just become so nocturnal you never see them except during the rut is only conclusion I can come up with.