On a new lease where everyone is management minded. Why is it important to keep the doe population down and what do you look for in does to take down?

Probably will take a solid year to have a good idea of your deer numbers before you can create a management plan with specific harvest goals.

When you're ready to shoot doe's, any doe is a good doe to shoot.. I personally like to shoot young 2 yo or an older mature doe.. The middle aged does tend to drop twins, not to say the other age classes wont, but more likely to drop twins in that 3-4 yo range.

Once you're in or close to the ratio you desire, try to take 1 doe per buck.. simple math.

My theory, as well as many others on here, beleive you have to manage doe numbers to increase buck sightings.. A more in line ratio btwn bucks/does, the more competition, the further a buck will have to travel to find a willing doe during the rut.

and welcome!

Thanks for the welcome. So more doe on a property would not bring in more bucks?

Too many doe on the place will hurt more than help when it comes to your bucks.

More does eat more. Less does equals more and better groceries for the remaining deer.

You can grow 10 average deer on 100 acres, but you grow 5 bigger ones.

Thanks for the insight. So tell me if my way of thinking is correct. Hunt does and cull bucks first part of season and if Im gonna take a trophy, take him at the end of season?

I shoot trophies when I see them. If your shooting a mature trophy, trust me his genetics are already out there!

Also not scared fo shooting a bread doe in late season, doesnt matter they all get bread any way.

matt

Need to know your total pop. carrying capacity and buck doe ratio. from there you can determine how many you need to take... Once you do that dont worry about anything but meating the number you set for.. we use to take an avg of 50 on 4,000 acres in houston co. and should have been more. Its amazing what difference it makes in the health and quality of your herd the closer you get to leveling it out

you'll want to shoot your does early. your rolling the dice if you pop one after mid december, she could have been knocked up by the stud buck of the area.

I dont think that makes much difference. If you shoot them all opening weekend/before the rut thats less the big one can breed... its all numbers games, Im with NAV if you know what you got and know what needs to stay and go as long as the numbers are right your good.

matt

I shoot them all before december 1st. that way, every doe in the field is going to get bred(hopefully) and won't get bred then shot.

its counter-productive imo to let a buck breed a doe then take a chance of her getting shot.

the one doe that a 170" bred may have been the one you just put a bullet into

The fewer does you have, the more the bucks will travel during the rut to try to find a doe. Increases your odds of seeing him, plus it tends to make him more susceptible to rattling and calling.

Try to take your trophy before they break off points fighting during the rutt.

good point!

How do you go about determining these? Especially the carrying capacity.

^^^^ This. Yeah shooting does isn't like shooting a trophy, but get the ratio right, and trophies are easier to see.

You need to enlist the help of your county TPWD biologist to help you with what your area has for carrying capacity, look at what your browse is like and get you a management plan in place. His services are free. You need some kind of survey done before starting anything and he can help with that. With a management plan you have to know where your are at in the beginning, what your goals are and what to do to get your goals accomplished.

This is my way of thinking,,it might be wrong but it my way. I like to shoot Does late in the season. For one thing, I don't have to worry about a 160-170 Buck breeding them. The reason I do it is to pull in more bucks from property around me.

I think if I have more Does on my property I can hold the neighboring bucks longer. Once the second rut is over, we take out the Does I think is needed.

Way too much thinking put into that. A lot of guys aint on a lease 6+ years to wait on that fawn to be born then hope he don't die of natural causes then become a trophy. I plan to be on my lease that long but a lot don't.


I worry more about cc and ratios, like stx said you should contact your local biologist

wbo said anything about leasing? redchevy is the landowner.

a landowner mindset and a leasee's mindset are gonna be different

It depends on the ranch and the area as to when I shoot does. If the rut is very early in the season I like to shoot them late. You have to kill trophies and other bucks early to get them before they break up. If it the rut is very late I might start right about Thanksgiving and hammer them quick and get it out of the way if I am not killing trophy bucks yet. If killing trophy bucks then I wait. The main reason I like to wait on killing does is to keep the fighting down and rut death losses down. It is not the best management from a genetics standpoint but it is from a management stand point in keep your better bucks alive for another year.

So your not putting much faith in your management plan then by killing all the does early? If you do you buck management work early and only leave your better bucks to do the breeding then it doesn't matter who does the breeding if all of age classes have the bucks you want in them. If you are doing your management program right all your younger deer should be better than the bucks and does they are from. What I try to do when killing does is kill does with fawns by their sides. That way you know you still have the genetics in that fawn from that doe and the buck she was bred to the year before in the herd.
By the way just how well is your management program working killing does early? Are the bucks better now than they were before you started killing does early?

when does need killin ....pick the big skinny grey fawnless ones first .....they are most likely old anyway and not productive to have around .....just mean old food eatin deer warnin troulble makers .......doe herds are almost always closely related deer ...granny mother daughter etc etc, so killin granny aint gunna effect the genetics at all .....no matter when she goes down ...just my opinion

If you are on a strict long term management plan you should try and take your oldest age class does. Shoot cull/management bucks as early as possible before the rut. The thought behind this type management is you have your best bucks doing the breeding and weeding out the old genetics as you improve in you get age classes.