It was a cool clear day in the post oak savannah of my early day deer hunting woods. I was only 12 years old and had the daunting task of hunting the highly pressured whitetail of the region on foot. My father had decided after one too many falls out of a tree that my tree stand hunting days were over until further notice. But I still had my sights set on the overly hunted basket rack bucks that called the area home. I did not have much success in my younger days but I still loved to hunt. Most of the time I had to settle for the relaxed does that would feed under the abundant post oak trees on the back 40 of our farm. Little did I know that I had implemented sound deer management at such a young age. While the surrounding farms were blasting every horned deer in sight with their high powered rifles, I was slinking around the oak flats slinging arrows at old fat does with high precision.
Many a season went by without a single sighting of even a spike or a button buck but so was the days of shoot first ask questions later deer management that was so popular in my area. I learned many things about this style of hunting and I think that it had a lot to do with my outlook on deer management today.
Excessive deer numbers and unbalanced sex ratios caused by decades of buck only hunting have proved detrimental to buck numbers across the whitetails range. Perhaps the worst effect has been on their habitat. A small deer population consumes a relatively small amount of high-quality groceries. Where a large population consumes much more forage but of a drastically reduced quality. (To put it in perspective it would be like an individual eating a high protein well balanced diet or someone eating from a fast food joint everyday of the week. Which one is going to fair better??) Unchecked, this can cause the forest forage to be unable to sustain growth. Seasonal fluctuations also affect the amount and quality of forage available to deer. This is particularly true in South Texas, where drought and scorching summer temperatures are the norm. During these dry spells plant regrowth halts and deer are forced to eat less quantity and quality of forage. To prevent habitat devastation and sustain herd health, buck-only harvesting does not work. The most biologically sound method is to harvest a balanced number of bucks and does. I have already mentioned carrying capacity in the previous article. Deer densities can be sustained at or below this level but if densities increase beyond the carrying capacity it will hurt not only the deer herd health but also habitat as well. For example, if you have 20 deer on 200 acres long enough, certain desirable plants could start to disappear, and not because the land can not support that number but because varying weather patterns and drought affect the amount of forage available. This often requires shifting hunting pressure from bucks to does. Although this has long been a controversial move, views have slowly started to change. In fact, the number of hunters purchasing doe tags is increasing annually which leads me to believe that more hunters are learning the benefits of having a balanced deer herd.
Most hunters would have a tough time deciding which doe is biologically better to shoot. But in my opinion and experience the better doe is the one that stands still long enough to present the best shot opportunity. Achieving an adequate doe harvest is difficult enough without putting extra restrictions on which doe to harvest. Doe harvest quotas are easier to achieve in areas where does have been traditionally protected. In these areas does are generally over abundant, visible and less wary of humans than bucks, making them easier to harvest. Even in such situations, hunters should refrain from using complicated criteria when shooting does because they respond quickly to increased hunting pressure. Meeting your antlerless deer harvest quota is much easier at the beginning of season when hunting pressure is light because as the season progresses it will become increasingly difficult to achieve. This is one reason hunters see relatively few does in well-managed areas. Does adapt to hunting pressure and rely on their inherent survival techniques. And if you think bucks are the smartest deer in the woods, you have not matched wits with an old wily doe. After surviving four or five seasons does are incredibly hard to hunt. If I had to recommend one trait for hunters to use before shooting a doe, it would be to refrain from killing buck fawns. This can be difficult but with the use of binoculars the task is made a little easier. Hunters could also achieve this by waiting until several deer are visible and using their size difference to determine fawns from does. Although in overpopulated whitetail herds, hunters should strive to reduce doe numbers, with little or no effort to keep from shooting buck fawns. Only after deer numbers are in the carrying capacity of the land should hunters attempt to reduce excessive pressure on buck fawns.
The greatest problem with deer herds today is hunters, not the deer. Even though the concept of using hunting to balance the buck to doe ratio of the herd is not a new idea, hunters still generally overly hunt the buck population. Harvesting a balanced number of bucks and does reduces the pressure on forage which means not only increased quantity of forage but also quality of forage. Obviously in areas where bucks are overly hunted, hunters need to shoot fewer bucks regardless of how many does they harvest. And donŐt believe that older bucks will magically appear by killing more does. Instead reduce hunting pressure on young bucks and kill significantly more does. The deer herd and your hunting experience will benefit from it. And remember that every time you pull the trigger you have made a management decision. I can not stress that enough because once you pull that trigger or let go of that arrow there is no getting that shot back
If you will keep all of these things in mind and put into effect the harvesting of does, your deer herd will benefit immensely. And when you reduce the herd number, the forage present on your land will automatically increase in quantity and quality which will improve the condition of not only the bucks in the herd but the does as well.
J.J. is from South Texas and has been hunting for around 14 years. He has a Bachelors degree in wildlife management, and is going to be continuing his education in the near future as he attempts to obtain his Masters in Wildlife Biology. He enjoys hunting whitetail and hogs in the mesquite choked brush of Texas.
