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?

 

[DoubleRidge]

.....are you looking at things which deer normally dont prefer to eat as an indicator as well?

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

guess not? Lol!

 

[Dumbluck]

figuring out what the hunters on the property actually want instead of what they say they want.

This whole post is awesome, thanks. But this section made me laugh. I'm a building science expert and consultant. I deal with this daily, builders will say they want their homes to be "certified" in a certain program or a custom built program and really at the end of the day 99% of them want a piece of paper that says they build to stringent programs without building to stringent programs.

I was hoping hunters would be different and you could referee for me. .

I do know that people saying they want trophy management with high hunter numbers certainly can not shoot any bucks under 4, and shooting a plethora of does on a herd under the carrying capacity of the land can't be beneficial. We would need the deer numbers high as possible just to have a decent number of bucks over 4.

 

[hbg1]

This is good news for me I suppose. My doe numbers are incredibly high but mennonites have recently moved in and it's like a war zone around me. Does are using their hooves to bring the food to their mouth so they can keep their eyes up looking for hunters

 

[BSK]

I do know that people saying they want trophy management with high hunter numbers certainly can not shoot any bucks under 4, and shooting a plethora of does on a herd under the carrying capacity of the land can't be beneficial. We would need the deer numbers high as possible just to have a decent number of bucks over 4.

It's a Catch 22 isn't it? A low-density herd will produce the highest quality per age-class. Yet at the same time there will be less total number of those high-quality mature animals.

Personally, we've got our herd at the highest density we've ever had, because we have the food to support them. And we're thoroughly enjoying it! Much more fun hunting. Now, the trick will be keeping that food production at such a high level that we can maintain this higher deer density into the future.

 

[tellico4x4]

difficult aspect of all when it comes to population density management is figuring out what the hunters on the property actually want instead of what they say they want. I don't think I've ever been contacted by a new client who didn't say the hunters want to see and kill bigger bucks. Who doesn't want that? And most will say they will do anything to grow bigger bucks. Well heck, I can design a plan that will do that! But it will entail keeping the deer density well below maximum capacity. "No problem!" the hunters will say. Until they experience that kind of hunting, and they are far less than satisfied.

After managing for 3+ bucks for 12 yrs at our place, several folks started making noise about want to take it up a notch. What I did was put together a questionnaire regarding the "importance" of 25 items of our club, with each item ranked from 1 thru 5. It mostly focused on hunting but included things like socialization, bring pets to camp, dues, to what time generators were turned off each night, so was fairly broad.

Once those were received I changed the questionnaire name from "importance" to "satisfaction" and had them answer the exact same questions from that aspect. I took the top 10 items with the biggest delta between importance and satisfaction, and presented them to our board. We addressed each and made changes accordingly.

We moved from managing for 3+ to 4+ and started sending all buck teeth out for cementum age testing. While vast majority were happy with the changes, we had one long term member who got really pissed and told me that "if he had known what we were doing, he'd answered his questions differently". In other words, he would have lied.

Getting a feel for what a group of hunters REALLY want out of their hunting experience, and managing towards that goal takes constant adjustment.

We adjust doe killing each year based on camera survey and hunter observation log. 2023 season was our 3rd year of sending teeth off, so we compared results for the 3 year period against our minimum buck restrictions and made a few tweaks to them. We will review that criteria every 3 years as well.

4) And the most complicated of all - deciphering what the hunters really want instead of what they say they want. THIS is the toughest part of successful private land management.

Fully agree! It took me half of my working career to learn the 90/10 rule when dealing with people.

You can usually please 90% the majority of the time, but the other 10% may very well take up 90% of your effort, and you'll never satisfy all of them. In reality, at the end of the year that 10% really doesn't matter.

As I get older and becoming a crudegy old fart, that number is about 60/40 now

 

[DoubleRidge]

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

Found article online that speaks to the question presented...I guess this information is obvious to many but it may be helpful for those who have questions. Knowing specific things to look for verses guessing or wandering during a late winter browse analysis may be helpful. Comments from article below:

"To gauge relative deer density on your property examine browse during the late winter when food is most limited, and evidence of deer use is most obvious.
If every greenbrier or honeysuckle vine is heavily browsed, you likely need to harvest more deer, create more food, or both".

Other specific plants mentioned in the article that could be considered:

"poison ivy, dewberry, American beauty berry, blackberry and blackgum".

Creating more food and maintaining the food we currently have fits our management plan more so than hammering all the does...interesing thread.

 

[Tn_Va_Hunter]

I own 34 acres. Of the 4 adjoining properties, 3 are private land that virtually sees no hunting pressure. The other is back up to national Forrest that is hunted year round. The first few years I hunted my new place hard. To this day I have not killed a decent buck off it (8 years). But I have also eased the pressure waaaaaaay back. It gets hunted youth weekend and about ML to end of rifle. The mature bucks have leaned over the last 4 years it's a relatively safe place. My son has killed a 150'inch 10 and 3 dang nice 8 points and my daughter killed a very nice 8 this year as well. I've not hunted my own place but 2 times this year. My BIL killed his best buck to date 125 inch 8' point in one hunt there this year.

I do what I can for the place. Planted many apple, chestnut, sawtooth, peach, pear, crabapple and food plots.

I tend to hunt the back side of my wife's family land that sees a lot of pressure from the neighbors and let them run deer to me. But I'm at the age that I'd rather see my kids or family kill a decent buck more than me. I think, for me, planting of the trees and seeing the farm change and take shape is much more enjoyable in the end when my kids are successful. Planting and growing trees have became one of my favorite hobbies.

The national Forrest gets a ton of pressure. But there is areas hunters has to really work to get into that the deer use to take cover and hide. And the majority don't wanna walk that far or work for it because of the steep terrain. I've learned letting some areas of the fields grow to about 4-6 feet towards end of the year also makes the deer more comfortable in crossing the fields. So with my 2 shooting houses I have areas that are mowed down and grown up while watching plots. It seems to help a lot.