It’s not an exact science, and it’s precisely why I tell most of my clients to get the numbers where we would like to get them in relation to habitat, and at that point we will modify harvest annually. It’s a fluid target. Very few properties can withstand heavy doe harvest indefinitely. BUT, it is a tool. It’s like driving 80 mph on the interstate. That’s fine until you hit a back road. When conditions change you have to adjust your speed.

And every fawn she would have had that would be a doe, you kill every deer they would have had. Killing one doe, potentially kills between 16-64 deer off your place over 5 years!

With this logic, you’re also killing the even higher numbers of potential offspring of the buck you shoot that would’ve mated with multiple does per season. No matter what you kill, you are preventing that animal from procreating.

Nobody is saying wipe out stupid numbers of does on every property, and if they are, they shouldn’t be giving advice to anybody.

You have to give it to goatkiller, at least he is consistent! Matt, thank you for wading through all the hate to provide valuable information that most of us appreciate.

Since the question has been asked I’ll bring up the idea that was discussed many years ago in QDMA publications and forum.

Replacement rates per deer
I’ve brought it up in here several times but never goes anywhere. Basic premise is that the amount of time to replace a deer in time. Half year old takes a half year but a 5 year old buck takes approximately 7-8 years because of how many bucks die before reaching that age.

I’m assuming that is no longer a thought or discussion amongst bios.

When I hear fetal studies I also hear this chorus

Ooh that smell
Can't you smell that smell
Ooh that smell
The smell of death surrounds you

Fair question.

About the only thing I can contribute is a study from MSU that found in the southeast, if you remove vehicle and hunting mortality, only 59 of 100 buck fawns survive until their 5th birthday. Basically, they die at a rate comparable to 10% annual mortality. If you add hunting related mortality and vehicle collisions it’s basically a wash.

Always felt they were promoting protecting the younger age class of bucks to the point of emphasizing what it took to get one to and older age class. So there’s little credence to the replacement rates per deer

You would definitely catch the early and peak time breeders sampling right after the season’s end but depending on the situation on your property;, doe numbers, buck numbers, and buck age structure or lack thereof, you might miss sampling a significant amount of later breeding happening in mid-late Feb and beyond. It’ll always be a bell curve. The length of that bell curve is what changes. We were trying, at the time, to capture as much data as possible and that all the does we were shooting had had the full opportunity to conceive. Like I said, this was before the wholesale doe slaughter and we sampled plenty that were bred in early, mid and late Feb, March, and even a few in April. If I had to guess, at the time, 65-80% were bred in that peak window from early to late Jan, depending on the county/property location, but the other 20-35% were bred outside of that very short peak window, before and after, with prob 2-5% being bred early and the majority of the outliers were being bred on the backside of the curve in their second or third cycles, well after peak. The shorter the tail on the curve, the better. There simply were not enough bucks to service all the does in their first cycle. Deer numbers were way higher in those counties at the time. Back when we were doing this, DMAP was the only option if you needed to kill large numbers of does.

I gotcha. If I were to do something like that, I would just want the question of “were they bred the first cycle or not?” Answered. But I see where you needed to do it later.

If it’s not killed it could prolong your rut, cause a higher buck mortality rate, and cause your fawn recruitment to go down. It will also have fawns if it’s not killed. So if your sex ratios or deer densities are not at a healthy number then your herd may not be healthy and your bucks can’t express their genetic potential. You get the education by reading studies by biologists, articles by biologists, podcasts, camera surveys, drone surveys, prior harvest information, and having a biologist come and do an assessment on your property.

I hope this helps you understand a little better.

This is incredible information. Thanks Matt. Good Discussions as well.

The only thing I cannot get past is the way to ascertain how many does you have on your property. Sometimes I get picks of like 7 or 8 in one picture, sometimes I get pics of 1 or 2. Are these the same does in every pick? Are they different deer? I do not know.

From an observational standpoint....How do I know if I am seeing the same deer over and over again or if it is different doe groups. Sometimes I sit in the stand and see 10, sometimes I see zero....Just seems like so much guess work

I no longer even worry about trying to get overall population estimates. Why? It doesn’t matter. I look at current habitat condition, future habitat potential, and evaluate browse pressure I see on different plant species. If there’s heavy browse pressure I know there’s too many deer for current conditions. So what can be done? That depends on what the landowner is hoping to accomplish. If they’re content seeing plenty of deer, not concerned about herd health and antler development, we may keep the status quo. But if they’re looking to improve herd health and increase antler growth potential, we may start trying to get sex ratio estimates and begin taking more does. There’s a formula used to estimate doe numbers based on the percentage of unique bucks in a population. There’s a lot of assumptions in the formula, and I’m not totally sold on it being accurate, but it’s about the best way we have to estimate populations, other than a real time drone survey. They are incredibly accurate, but only offer a look into the current population on that property at that given time. Camera surveys provide the use of deer across a period of time.

Camera surveys suck. Can’t really do it during hunting season. Do it before food plots are planted and put a bait pile and a camera on every 200 acres you got. Study pics like crazy and see if you can differentiate between the doe groups. Count fawns as 50/50 buck and does. Do it all at one time. 10-14 day period. But yeah it’s hard. That’s why we elected to do a drone survey this year. 4 drones at one time to not double count does and hopefully get it done in 1 day. Then get a wildlife management biologist to guide you in your harvest decisions.

And there ya go.

Good answer....I am very new in the realm of running a club.. Best thing I knew to do was structure our harvest guidelines very similar to the SOAs. to be eligible for harvest they have to meet 1/4 criteria
- 18' main beam
-180 lbs
-15" inside spread
- 4.5 years old

I have asked all members to hold off harvesting does for the first 3 years until we have some observational data to pair with that decision(one guy shot one)

I have hunted it 5 times this season from a stand and seen 0 does.
I walked through several acres of cutover(what looks to me to be awesome habitat) on a couple occasions throughout various parts of the season and see several trails and beds but not a ton of browse pressure- i.e. those sweet gum(?) stumps that sprout leaves at the bases dont look chewed on, and the greenbriar hasnt been hit real hard. Several white oaks dropped acorns down in the SMZs but they were not fed on very heavily either...data seems to suggest to me like we do not have a very high deer density and not shooting does would be beneficial.

But to tie it back in to my previous question- another member will routinely get pics of does over a corn pile. So just because we get pics of deer every night at the corn doesn't mean we have alot of does on the property to me.