Dumbluck - doe harvests

[hammer33]

One of the biggest challenges for small property owners is "what are you really managing?"
If deer have a typical 1 mile radius home range, and you have 30 acres, is your management plan actually good? Bad? Ineffective? How do you know?

 

[Bone_Chaser]

It is amazing with only antlered deer being allowed to be taken that you are seeing so many more bucks than does. Do you think they need to increase the number of hunts?

I typed that backwards. 15-1 doe to buck was our observation among 7 hunters over 4 years.

My suggestion would be antler restrictions 12" spread or 4 on one side and allow antlerless harvest other than archery/youth for a year or two to balance the herd and then reevaluate. From what I saw in 4 years an anterless only hunt was necessary but without any restrictions irrelevant.

I feel like the majority of hunters don't dream of killing a spike or fork horn these days. If 30-40 hunters could take a 2.5+ year old buck it would be a much better hunt. It's unit 6 and never going to produce pope and young caliber bucks on the regular as a public hunt but if hunters had a legitimate opportunity at anything decent it would be worth it for those of us who hunt in east TN and don't have access to many opportunities.

It also has the unique advantage of being land locked 97% unless deer decide to swim the lake and is massive. There are plenty of deer there. I've hunted several quotas in Kentucky and Tennessee and as far as sightings it was number 1. I saw 1 decent buck scouting I would have shot in 4 years.

 

[DoubleRidge]

Correct. You want to conduct habitat browse analyses at the lowest food resource time of year, which is usually late February and early March.

Appreciate it...and I understand looking for a browse line....I guess I was wondering if there was a particular type of food source that you are focusing on? And are you looking at things which deer normally dont prefer to eat as an indicator as well?

We dont currently have an obvious high browse line..so I'm trying to learn other, more specific things to be watching for.

I guess an easier way to ask the question is: Are there certain plants you always include in your late winter browse analysis?