Managing a deer herd is a year round job, it's hard work but in the end its all paid off in the form of those ever so delicious backstraps. Ideally, a 50/50 buck to doe ratio is what we want. When trying to take out does from the herd I've always looked for more mature ones and if they have young fawns with them. Just wondering everyone else's opinions on what does are best to take to try to reach that magic 50/50 mark.
I am not sure if you will ever get the 50/50 mark. Depending on land and the hunters around you. When I started hunting my land the ratio was terrible. Only owning 80 acres and having people around you believing in "if its brown its down" its hard to control those kinds of things. But I have killed a mature doe the last 4 years and have been seeing it start to balance out. I know i will never reach the 50/50 but I am very close and its showing in the deer herd. I don't know if thats any help or not. Just go after the mature does and set trail cameras out to keep track of all the deer on your land. Every year you should have a number of doe or buck that you want taken out to maintain a 50/50 balance
i agree. around my place it sounds like world war 3 when rifle season rolls around. I've hunted my whole life, but really only started to manage my herd probably 5 years ago. My neighbors and family have never had a problem getting deer, its just that if they see a 2.5 year old buck with a little 6 basket rack they shoot it just because it has antlers. Then they all blame shooting small deer on "genetics." Trying to get everyone around me on board with the management is like trying to stuff rain back in the clouds but since i've started to it has paid off for my hunting group at least. in the last 4 years we've had a 126 3/8 8 point, 130 inch 9 point, a 143 1/2 inch 10 point, and a 163 1/8 non typ 12 point with a third main beam. There are bigger bucks out there i have pictures of yet too, its just hard to convince old timers to do something differently.
This is the problem I have. My mom and step brother will shoot darn near anything that moves, and the gun season? Dear Lord it horrible. From first shooting light last year to 8 in the morning (about 1.5 hours) I counted 122 shots. I stopped counting after that.
Its one of those factors you really can't control. You can always try to talk to your neighbors but like you said its a very difficult if not impossible task. Just do what you can do to create a balanced and healthy herd. It will definitely work but just not to its full potential. plots and balancing the herd are two of the top things.
