After reading all this I have a question for yall to answer. Why does the state allow the slaughter of 2 doe per day? I've seen a dramatic decrease in deer population where I live over the past few years and is getting worse and it must be because of killing so many does.

After reading all this I have a question for yall to answer. Why does the state allow the slaughter of 2 doe per day? I've seen a dramatic decrease in deer population where I live over the past few years and is getting worse and it must be because of killing so many does.

After reading all this I have a question for yall to answer. Why does the state allow the slaughter of 2 doe per day? I've seen a dramatic decrease in deer population where I live over the past few years and is getting worse and it must be because of killing so many does.

After reading all this I have a question for yall to answer. Why does the state allow the slaughter of 2 doe per day? I've seen a dramatic decrease in deer population where I live over the past few years and is getting worse and it must be because of killing so many does.

The 2 doe a day rule is suppose to give everyone flexibility to manage how they see fit for their property. This is where education becomes a key role in management because what's needed in one spot may not be needed in another. We use the 2 doe a day rule at my hunting club to try and harvest our doe quota in one big flurry on opening weekend of gun season. Being able to shoot 2 per day allows us to harvest the numbers we need to harvest in a short time period instead of having to spread the pressure out over a longer time period. This is how we use the flexibility of the rule to our advantage

Everything depends on your local fawn recruitment rate. Basically, to hold a deer population stable over time, you must remove the same number of adult deer (by all forms of mortality) as the number of fawns that survive to their first birthdays (fawn recruitment rate).

The 2 doe a day rule is suppose to give everyone flexibility to manage how they see fit for their property. This is where education becomes a key role in management because what's needed in one spot may not be needed in another. We use the 2 doe a day rule at my hunting club to try and harvest our doe quota in one big flurry on opening weekend of gun season. Being able to shoot 2 per day allows us to harvest the numbers we need to harvest in a short time period instead of having to spread the pressure out over a longer time period. This is how we use the flexibility of the rule to our advantage

CNC - Allowing 2 doe per day does not give all the private land in Alabama flexibility to manage because your neighbor has killed all the does. That sounds good if the whole entire state was one big hunting club but it's not. Left unchecked people will slaughter them like what is going on now in some areas.

So BSK, what your saying is that in order for us to know how many bucks (or deer in general) that would be appropriate for us to harvest, then it would be important for us to have an idea of fawn recruitment. Correct?

Fawn recruitment can be monitored using trail cams, hunter observation data, and lactation rates. What do you think would be an acceptable fawn recruitment rate for most of us?

After reading all this I have a question for yall to answer. Why does the state allow the slaughter of 2 doe per day? I've seen a dramatic decrease in deer population where I live over the past few years and is getting worse and it must be because of killing so many does.

Incompetence.....

How does one determine fawn recruitment rate? I would think it was about as difficult as determining the number of unique does on a property, since fawns lose their spots over the course of their first year and there are no antlers to compare.

So, the flexibility of management only pertains to does? The flexibility of buck kills wasn't left to the education of hunters.

One of the most basic and simplest methods of determining fawn recruitment rate is by simple looking at the lactation rates of the does that you harvest. Each time you harvest a doe, look to see if she has milk running out when you gut her and make note of how many do and how many don�t. Keep track of that percentage from year to year and look at the trends. For example, let�s say for 5-6 years in a row, 70-80% of our does that were harvested were lactating (had milk). All of sudden we see lactation rates drop down to 40-50%. We can then assume that something has changed and therefore we may need to adjust our harvests accordingly. If we see this trend continue for several years then we may need to take a closer look at the root cause of the problem.

The limitations of just using lactation rates though is that it doesn�t give you any idea of how many does had twins and how many just had singletons. It only tells you which deer nursed fawns and which ones lost them. It does however, give you some baseline so that you could at least recognize if recruitment rates were really, really low. In order to really get a better idea of fawn recruitment its better to also look at some trail cam data as well as what hunters see in the woods.

Bsk,
Does your property or any property you manage have large bear populations and if so how has this effected your fawn recruitment and camera surveys?