• Help Support TNDeer:

Too Many Does!

TNRidgeRider

TNRidgeRider

Well-Known Member
Joined
Nov 28, 2020
Messages
57
Location
Lawrence
Need to cull some does. Does anyone know how Hunters for the Hungry in Lawrence county works?
 

Attachments

  • 7E7BB498-C0F0-4798-8946-A8B30F0189BE.jpeg
    7E7BB498-C0F0-4798-8946-A8B30F0189BE.jpeg
    72.3 KB · Views: 427
You know that doe's produce bucks? never had too many doe in a area as they are buck bait. Do you have a browse line that is noticeable? , how many doe do you see every time you go?
 
When judging your trail cam pics please consider half of your small fawn deer as bucks.....hard to tell in picture but deer facing camera looks like a button buck. (Pic gets grainy when trying to enlarge it on phone)....but many folks (not saying you) will compare antlered bucks to antlerless deer to try and calculate buck to doe ratio......when in reality we need to calculate "male to female" .....so running a trail cam survey count half your fawn as male or buck...and half as doe....do the same on those long all day sits....think you might find the buck to doe (male to female) ratio is better than you thought.......but if you have hammered the antlered bucks in the area by all means take a couple of does....I just think in most cases it isn't needed....unless the property is way above its carrying capacity....good luck hunting!
 
In a photo census, you don't use fawns in calculations of adult sex ratio. It is the ADULT sex ratio. In a photo census, deer are broken into three categories: adult males (bucks 1 1/2+), adult females (does 1 1/2+), or fawns. The adult sex ratio is calculated by dividing the total adult females in all pictures by the total adult males in all pictures. For example, if you count up all the adult does in all of your trail-cam pictures and there are 500, and you have 200 antlered buck pictures, 500/200 = 2.5 adult does per adult buck.

Fawn pictures are used to calculate the fawn recruitment rate, which is expressed as a percentage: fawns divided by adult does and multiply that answer by 100 to turn it into a percentage.
 
But also be aware that photo census numbers will be HEAVILY influenced by camera location/set-up. Adult sex ratio data can be VERY different based on whether the camera is pointed at a bait pile versus a food plot versus a scrape. The numbers can even be influenced by time of day (daylight versus nighttime pictures) and the camera settings (number of pictures per trigger, delay time between triggers, etc.).
 
BSK said:
In a photo census, you don't use fawns in calculations of adult sex ratio. It is the ADULT sex ratio. In a photo census, deer are broken into three categories: adult males (bucks 1 1/2+), adult females (does 1 1/2+), or fawns. The adult sex ratio is calculated by dividing the total adult females in all pictures by the total adult males in all pictures. For example, if you count up all the adult does in all of your trail-cam pictures and there are 500, and you have 200 antlered buck pictures, 500/200 = 2.5 adult does per adult buck.

Fawn pictures are used to calculate the fawn recruitment rate, which is expressed as a percentage: fawns divided by adult does and multiply that answer by 100 to turn it into a percentage.
Click to expand...

Thanks BSK....great explanation and detail on a camera survey.....I just know many guys can get discouraged thinking the majority of deer they see are ALL does when many of the young fawn deer they see that fall are button bucks or male ......just makes me scratch my head a little when I hear someone say "I bet the doe to buck ratio in my area is 10:1"....while I can't imagine how that would even be possible with around half of the fawns being male? Anyway... getting off topic.... interesting stuff...thanks for sharing.
 
BSK said:
But also be aware that photo census numbers will be HEAVILY influenced by camera location/set-up. Adult sex ratio data can be VERY different based on whether the camera is pointed at a bait pile versus a food plot versus a scrape. The numbers can even be influenced by time of day (daylight versus nighttime pictures) and the camera settings (number of pictures per trigger, delay time between triggers, etc.).
Click to expand...

Great point.
 
I'm not just seeing does, we have several mature bucks on my property as well. I have always been told the ratio needed to be close to 1:1, most hunters in my area kill only bucks. I have killed 2 big doe this year, and that's probably the most that have been killed in probably 5 years, really feel like I need to cull one more, but I don't have a need for anymore meat. Good to hear you guys thoughts on herd management.
 
What I would give for doe sightings! Ever since the big EHD outbreak of 2007 and the implementation of an Earn-A-Buck program (must kill an antlerless deer before shooting a buck) on a neighboring wildlife refuge, our doe population collapsed. Haven't shot one in years, yet our adult sex ratio often runs 1.5 to 2.0 bucks per doe.

Thankfully, with the end of the Earn-A-Buck program this year, and the lack of deer kill in the area last year due to the forest damage from the remnant hurricane along KY Lake, we're finally seeing some does.
 
I don't post much and followed this site many years before joining , I just want to say BSK thanks for sharing your knowledge and your feed back has truly been missed some great folks on here and love this site and it's not been the same with out your post
 
TNRidgeRider said:
That must make for some interesting rut activity.
Click to expand...
"Interesting," yes. Good hunting, not really. Because we've had such a skewed sex ratio towards bucks over the last decade or so, the rut is early and extremely short. It doesn't take long for the bucks to breed the few does. Then, as soon as our early rut is over, the bucks all move towards properties farther from the refuge that have more does and a later rut. Hunting during our very brief rut can be good, but after about 10 days, the bucks simply leave for hot does farther away.

This year, with more does, our rut has returned to what it was like pre- 2007 EHD: later and longer, but more fun to hunt.
 
And deer will avoid cameras, especially mature bucks. They will walk behind them, around them, etc. Deer figure out cameras quickly.
 
Headhunter said:
And deer will avoid cameras, especially mature bucks. They will walk behind them, around them, etc. Deer figure out cameras quickly.
Click to expand...

Deer, especially the oldest and wariest deer, will absolutely learn to avoid cameras that 1) produce visible light or audible sound when they trigger, and/or 2) see a lot of human traffic around the camera from being checked/cards swapped.

The two things I do to keep mature bucks on camera at a single location all season is 1) only use black-flash cameras, and 2) only set-up and check cameras from the back of an ATV. For some reason, the deer never seem to avoid the location because they smelled where an ATV had driven through the area. An ATV will scare deer away from a camera site as it is driven in, but the deer are usually right back in a few hours. However, walk back to a camera way back in the woods (where people generally don't walk except during deer season), and that often greatly reduces deer traffic at the site.

I've gotten to the point that no matter how good of a camera location I find, if I can't drive an ATV right to the camera, I don't put a camera there.

Of course, another way around the problem of deer learning to avoid cameras is to constantly move your cameras.
 

Latest posts

Back
Top