Originally Posted by Mbrock
Originally Posted by Nightwatchman
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.


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.