the rancher on the place we hunt in LLano County tells us his fawn crop was 5% or less. His biologist is suggesting a very limited doe harvest.

is this Hill Country wide?

drought and coyotes

I think this is the case in most areas

The place my son and I are hunting in LaSalle County got plenty of rain but unfortunately it came way late in the summer. It is also heavily fed but still the fawn crop is pretty low. I'd guess it at around 25% or so.
We probably need to do some real counts from inside the stands before attempting to fill all the MLD doe tags my buddy (ranch owner) gave me.

Deer stand paperwork.

My place had a really good crop, see several fawns each sit at different locations. Good body condition too, not scraggly little things. Several twinning's, but not as many as last year.

I figure, based on my fawn crop, I need to take about 6-8 doe this year after taking about as many last year.

Our place in Sonora is still recovering from Anthrax.

We record all sightings from the blinds and our average last year was 21 bucks, 4 does, 4 fawns per hunt viewed from blinds.

We weren't expecting to see many this year. Our spotlight counts in August also showed very few does and only 1 fawn, so we weren't expecting much for a fawn crop this year.


We sat in a few blinds the first weekend in October and we had 9 does and 7 fawns show up at one of our feeders. Don't know where they came from but was happy to see that.

We are probably 4-5 years away from even thinking about shooting a doe on our place.

My brother has a lease in mason county, opening weekend of bow season they saw 17 coyotes, not 1 deer.
He doesn’t really know what the fawn crop is yet but he thinks it’s way low.
My place in Leon is getting better since I had a trapper come in and catch coyotes, he caught 6 last year and 5 this year and it does make a difference.
A trapper suppose to trap my place in Coleman county because coyotes are getting out of hand.
We hunted on a lease in Gillespie county for 22 years and never saw or heard a coyote, they were eradicated because of the sheep and goat industry, there was a good fawn crop every year.
I hate coyotes and hogs.

We are seeing regular doe and fawns throughout the property. Not as many fawns as last year but that was the most we had ever seen. Fawn body size appears larger this year compared to last year interestingly. Assuming we had more that hit the ground early. Biologist increased our doe tags from 18 to 20.

Lots of fawns on my place, many still with spots. Very late drop. N E Tx

In Navarro County, we have seen very few fawns. Have only seen two from the early drop. Had Hay done in late May, and now I am wishing we had waited. I wonder if that hurt the fawn survival rate?

I'm about 12-15% here in Stephens county.

Our fawn crop doesn’t seem to ever vary much we run cameras year round surveys etc. I think a lot of knee jerk reactions.

How big is your place, how is it stocked (livestock?), how was your summer? In Mills county I've been running cameras all summer and I would say our fawn crop is about 1/3 of average (600 acres, heavy livestock). Heat, drought, coyotes did a LOT of work. I had 7 does and 3 fawns on camera the other day at the same time. That's at least four dry does. I consistently see groups of 3-4 does while driving around and there is usually only one fawn in the mix. Even driving the country roads in our area I see many does w/o fawns. There is no knee-jerk here. We've got tons of bucks so access to breed is not an issue.

Why do people say stuff like this? All of us are trying our best to manage or land in the best way possible and some keyboard cowboy comes along and defecates his bravado onto his screen. Makes you wonder if it is just pure ignorance or an intentional insult. My guess is that he does not fave a few million dollars tied up in the land - probably easier to stick out your chest (and show your arse) in that situation.

For the record, my formally educated and 35 year practicing biologists says our fawn crop is easily off 50%...but I am certain he and all of the other guys are just having a knee jerk reaction.

Our doe population is just recovering from the last drought.
Im watching 11 does in my food plot and only 1 is a fawn. It’s a button buck.
Last year we had 5, including the first set of twins I’ve seen in several years, 4 were button bucks and only one was a doe. Right now we are very close to a 1:1 ratio.

x2 This is my experience out by Ivie too.

Blanco County - fawn crop for sure less than 25%. It may be far less than that.

West central young county. We have only seen one fawn all summer. Run cameras 365 days a year & out there on average every 2 weeks. With the number of yotes & pigs , then throw in the drought it is bad.

It’s hard to be sure about the fawn crop. We usually see a few in the ‘yard’, which is really pasture around the house, but sightings were few. I put out some cameras at feeders I’ve started using again and was surprised to see some spotted fawns way after I would have expected spots to have faded. I’m seeing does, but maybe less than in previous years. I’ll know more after the season starts and I spend more time in the stands.

We had a great fawn crop this year. I was surprised because we were in a drought as well. Saw alot of twins and even triplets.

For the areas with what seems to be drastic results compared to last year, what hurt the most? No water at all or smaller amount of natural browse due to less rainfall?

I do think the “heavy livestock” makes a large difference. We have no stock on our hunting land. At home I’m surrounded by grazed or bailed tracts, my place at home is small (20 acres no stock yet) but still seeing a normal number of fawns with only 7 inches of rain in the past 12 months.

It absolutely does. Carrying capacity of land includes all animals on it so if you keep livestock and don’t have light stocking rates and/or carry out rotational grazing you will definitely see native species populations hurt more in hard years, even normal years depending on the habitat. Not everyone can work around this as they don’t own the land or depend on livestock for a living but if you’re serious about deer it’s a legitimate factor you have to consider when evaluating a property for purchase or leasing.

We hunt Coke County and our fawn crop is non-existent this year. Our Game Warden stopped by last weekend and I asked him his thoughts on fawns this year. He confirmed what we already suspected that there was pretty much no fawn crop at all county wide. Summer range conditions show in our racks this year as well. Probably the worst racks I have seen in over 15 years on this place.

we are in deep STex - did the helicopter survey last week and fawn was around 60% - we feed well and have water available even during drought - we will shoot 60-70 does this season and a number of cull bucks

Because that is reality. We have had more rain at the ranch than home but it surely was t a great rain year. My first sit the first 7 deer out of the brush, 4 does and 3 fawns.