We have a county that’s been consistently killing 3000 does for the last 5 years and populations have remained stable…….How big would the total population of does need to be in order to take out that many each year and maintain the same population level?.... Would 10,000 does be about right??? Assume coyotes are accounting for 40-50% fawn mortality........

These are all guesstimates:

So you are killing adult Doe deer:
3000 does hunters
300 cars
700 other causes (age, sickness, yotes, etc)
You need to replace ~4000 does per year

Births:
80% of Does have 1.5 fawns/year (yearlings & adults)
50% of fawns are female
50% of fawns are killed by yotes

= 4000/.8/.5/.5/1.5

= 10,000

Maybe 2:1 doe/buck = 15,000 deer (includes spikes & button bucks)

Lee County is 616 sq miles so ~25 deer/ sq miles

Does that make sense?

Yeah that’s pretty close to what I was thinking as well…… So if we use Lee county then as the example they game checked 1165 does last year……We know game check isnt getting all of them so even if we use a correction factor and add another 40% then that’s still only 1700 does being killed……which is roughly half of our example numbers……..I’m just trying to do the figuring on the whole shebang from that and it would seem like there’s no way that there’s nearly as many deer in the state as they have estimated or either our figuring is wrong……We average game checking about 1450 does per county......

I was thinking that maybe instead of being 10,000 does that there’s actually 20,000 but if that were the case then I would think you would have major growth occurring until populations were maxed out kind of thing going on…..which isnt the case……..In other words, everyone’s doe harvest rate should match up to a stable population rate, correct??

Seems like about the only way you could be killing way less does than your “stable rate”…. like if you had 3000 killed with 20K does actually being present instead of our estimated 10K….. is if you were at absolute max carrying capacity…..In which case I think there would be obvious signs through browse lines, low doe weights, low fawn counts, etc………I don’t think we have much of that occurring

Other than an area being at max carrying capacity though….the number of does taken annually countywide should correlate with a total population level, correct??……Meaning that if your county is killing 3000 does annually then you should have a population of about “X” amount does supporting that…..and we’re saying its 10K…..I bet those number arent too far off from reality though……. Kinda depends on if we’re not accounting for enough mortality in other areas…..maybe fawn mortality is 75% instead of 50%.....

But by that figuring of 10K does present for 3K killed……..Game check shows about 100K killed statewide…….Lets make it 150K though to make up for those not participating……and that would still only equate to 500K does present statewide…….Unless our figuring is off somewhere??

If you started the past season with 10,000 does and 3000 are killed by hunters and another 1000 in vehicle collisions and natural mortality, you're ending the season and carrying 6000 does in the population into year 2. If each of the 6,000 does drop 1.5 fawns each, at a 50/50 ratio, and 50% of all fawns dont make it for whatever reason, that means you're starting the next hunting season with 6000 does and 2,250 doe fawns (most of which will not be old/sexually mature enough to be bred during year 2)...........see where I am going with this?

Based on the above, the number has to be, and stay, way higher than 10,000 in order to sustain that type of heavy harvest, or the population decline will increase exponentially in every successive year, if those types of annual loss numbers are maintained in perpetuity.

So for example Dallas Co has averaged checking in 3000 does per season for at least the last 5 years………How many does are you saying have to be present for them to be able to keep doing that year after year??

According to Google the state estimates we have 1.41 million deer as of 2022 by the way…..They may not be far off but I'm curious as how they arrived there.....