Not that simple, and you should want your herd WELL below carring capacity, for many reasons.

Simple math and in lower deer herds, simply correct. However, in many deer herds, that math is not as simple and, often, simply incorrect. Individual doe health has a lot to do with it, and that is influenced by both relative population and relationship to habitat.

I do not understand your logic of deer on a property that is at 25% or carrying capacity will somehow eat more and be larger than deer on a property that is at 75% or carrying capacity. If a said property is at 75% carrying capacity that means all of the deer on said property will have everything they need or want to eat to reach there maximum potential of weight or antler size same as if that property was at 25%. In either case they will not eat anymore or any less.

It is not a matter of eating more or less; it is what they are eating. In many environments, the highest-quality food sources are limited in quantity. With less deer in the environment (fewer mouths), those limited-quantity food sources are shared by fewer deer, meaning each individual deer's diet consists of a higher percentage of the best food sources. This increases the performance (size/health/growth) of each individual deer. That is the reason free-ranging Trophy Management programs try to keep deer densities at 30-50% of capacity--so that each deer is maximizing their intake of the limited best-quality food sources.

That's one of the reasons the Midwest grows such big deer. They often have around 30 deer per square mile in an environment that could literally support hundreds of deer per square mile (virtually unlimited high-quality food sources). That's a big difference with many parts of the Southeast that contain 30 deer per square mile in an environment that can maintain 40 deer per square mile.

Predator-prey cycles
Published: July 2, 2008, 8:31 pm
Updated: September 10, 2011, 11:31 am
Lead Author: Carl Hoagstrom
Topics: Predator and Prey Ecology Conservation Biology Ecology Theory Population
This article has been reviewed by the following Topic Editor: J. Emmett Duffy
Predator-prey cycles are characterized by regularly spaced increases and decreases in the population sizes or densities of a predator and its prey. Classically, the predator is a carnivorous species and the prey is an herbivorous species. However, carnivores that prey on other carnivores, herbivores feeding on plants, and even parasites attacking their host organisms are sometimes considered to have the same relationship, and so to be predator-prey systems. The predator population�s fluctuations follow those of the prey population through time. That is, the prey population begins to increase while the predator population is still decreasing and the prey population decreases while the predator population is still increasing. The classic (and simplest) explanation of these cycles is that the predator drives the changes in the prey population (by catching and killing its members) and the prey (as the predator�s food supply) drives the predator�s population changes, but a lag between the population responses of predator and prey cause the two cycles to be out of phase with one another. However, this explanation has been challenged, and it may not be the only viable explanation for the pattern.

In general, the increases and declines of population density and the regulation of those changes are important aspects of community organization with the potential for practical applications such as pest control and conservation of endangered species. Population cycles, in which the population increases and decreases repeatedly, at more or less regular intervals, have been at the center of the attempt to understand population fluctuations. Cycles are useful because the changes can be anticipated with some confidence and more changes may occur in a given time period than in an irregularly fluctuating population. The regulation of predator-prey cycles has been an important part of these studies, and it was the focus of a pioneering attempt at mathematical modeling in ecology. Alfred Lotka and Vito Volterra developed the classical mathematical model independently and a simplified, intuitive development of their model is a good place to start consideration of predator-prey cycles.

Cycles up and Cycles down,


boom and bust

I kill every yote I can get a chance at, even tried my 380 at over a hundred yards the other, was hoping for a hail mary

BSK

I read an article years back mentioning mature bucks seek out less than ideal habitats as a means to avoid predators, this is in reference to the core area he uses


have you ever read or studied anything of the likes

No I would not rather hunt in a place where lets say you hunt 30 days during deer season and 25 of those days you do not see any deer at all. I also do not want to hunt in a place where the deer have surpassed the carrying capacity of the land and the deer are unhealthy. But you can have a healthy deer herd and also be able to see deer most of the time when you hunt. You can have a happy medium where you can have a healthy deer herd without reducing the deer population to the point where you can all week without seeing a single deer. Where I hunt you see deer approximately 75% of the times you hunt We also kill deer every year that scores in the 140s and a few in past years in the 150s. This is what I prefer I have hunted in places where you could hunt for a week and not see a single deer and we didn't kill any bigger deer there than we do where I hunt now.

This is what I know from hunting the same properties all my life...before the "kill every doe you see so you can have bigger bucks" mentality was engrained in every hunter's mind there was more rack bucks and larger rack bucks killed on the properties I hunt on. Now I am not against shooting does if needed but where I hunt with the abundant habitat and mild winters the deer herd was in just as good a shape health wise twenty years ago as today (bodyweights and racks are basically the same and the dang rut is still like it was then). The only difference now is alot less deer which equals alot less bucks killed.

Anyone/club that shoots every doe you see is misguided. Also you didn't say what your property does about trigger control on bucks, raising the buck age structure and such.

We average now four bucks a year off of 1500 acres. Adults aim to shoot only 3.5 and up and kids or first time adult hunters are 6 point or better with a 12 inch spread. On this same property back in the 80's and early 90's we killed around twenty bucks every year while passing on plenty more and hardley ever sat in the woods without seeing a deer. Furthermore with hunting like that we had no problem keeping kids interested in hunting unlike now where if a kid hunts half the season without seeing a deer they will find something else to do.....