Buck Shaming

[Knehrke]

What about the "shaming" when you miss a buck?

Far more severe at my camp

You get your shirt tail cut and hung on a wall and hear about that s*** every season........

bill

Same here! Pick your shot, make your shot. On my properties, everybody sets their own standards, and the only rules I have are (1) that you limit yourself to one buck, and (2) that during archery season, does only get shot early, and not during the height of the rut...unless you are under 16 or hunting with a kid, in which case blaze away, since it's more important to keep our future hunters in the game. Although sometimes the kids are better than the parents, "Dad, that one is a Mommy, we should let her go and wait for one with horns" lol.

 

[IkemanTx]

If someone has thin skin, they won’t make it long around my family.

Sarcasm is our sole communication style, especially when it’s all the guys.

If they can’t take some jokes, we don’t want ‘em in camp.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[SwampCat]

The key at my place is not so much growing bucks as it is attracting bucks. I only have 300 ac. My neighbors who own ten acres kill more of my camera bucks than we do. And very rarely can we identify a buck from last year that shows up this year. At my place - it is all about attracting bucks. I think we could kill every buck this year and we would have just as many next year. Year round food and plenty of does is our key.

 

[Telemark]

I only have 300 ac. My neighbors who own ten acres kill more of my camera bucks than we do

How does that happen? I have heard of this many times. Do they hunt more? Hunt better? Use bait piles?

 

[yoderjac]

The key at my place is not so much growing bucks as it is attracting bucks. I only have 300 ac. My neighbors who own ten acres kill more of my camera bucks than we do. And very rarely can we identify a buck from last year that shows up this year. At my place - it is all about attracting bucks. I think we could kill every buck this year and we would have just as many next year. Year round food and plenty of does is our key.

We only have about 375 acres and it is just the opposite here. We do have some adjacent properties that either wittingly or unwittingly cooperate. We plant food primarily for stress periods for QDM. We do plant for attraction during hunting season, but that is to hold does, not bucks. For us to hold bucks, it is all about cover and sanctuary. The only neighbor that shoots big bucks is the one that had a heavy hardwood select cut about 15 years or more ago. It is thick natural regrowth cover with too many sticks per acre to walk through. The mature oaks they left in the select cut for regeneration provide the only food source at this point. It has been the primary bedding for big bucks and where most have been shot. He hunts it very sparingly and selectively. Those bigger bucks feed on our land but once the season start it is almost exclusively at night. During the rut, we've killed a few 3 1/2 year old deer and I took one 4 1/2 year old 16 point (seen in velvet in my avatar), but most are taken in that neighbors bedding area.

That is slowly changing. We clear-cut couple ridge tops of low quality hardwoods about 4 years ago totaling about 20 acres and , then applied herbicide and conducted prescribed burns in following years. Bucks are slowly changing their bedding as the neighbors land matures. We have another 5 acre west facing pine ridge scheduled for clear-cut in the next couple years. We plan to keep all of them in early succession. That puts bedding on the northwest, northeast, and eventually south central parts of our property with the main food in the middle and harvest plots scattered about.

Cover and sanctuary are the key to big bucks here. The food and does make it less necessary to wander off and get shot on neighboring properties.

Our buck guidelines are this:

Novice hunters: Shoot anything you like. As long as you are good with shooting it, we are good with it.

Experience hunters: Target 3 1/2 and older bucks. We understand that in some circumstance, there is not a lot of time for field judgement and harvest of 2 1/2 year old deer will occur from time to time. The only 1 1/2 year old bucks that should be harvested are those that are injured. Deer hunting with buckshot and dogs is permitted in our general area, so deer badly limping is not that uncommon.

Thanks,

Jack

 

[gonzalezeb]

My first deer was a Maryland Sika Deer (shot with Thompson Center New Englander using a 50 cal round ball)...when I took the shot I honestly thought I was shooting a doe. Turned out to be a spike with antlers barely 1.5 inches in length (The antlers actually were curled and grew relatively flat). I took some flak for shooting "Bambi". But since it was my first deer I decided to have a rug made out of the hid and European mounted it - there is no shame here!

 

[Telemark]

Cool! I'm dying to go after Sika deer. Are you still in Maryland?

 

[gonzalezeb]

Cool! I'm dying to go after Sika deer. Are you still in Maryland?

I am...haven’t figured out how to leave this god forsaken place yet.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[SwampCat]

How does that happen? I have heard of this many times. Do they hunt more? Hunt better? Use bait piles?

Yes - they all use bait piles - but I believe the biggest difference is the number of hunters on adjacent lands. There are over ten adjacent property owners, who own from five to 1400 acres. Seven of them own twenty acres or less. All but two of them are hunters. My wife and I are two hunters. The adjacent landowners probably account for twenty or thirty hunters when spouses and kids are counted. Also, when you only have one stand - on a bait pile at that - and everyone who hunts that property hunts that one stand - there is more likely to be someone in that stand when the buck shows up. It is mostly just my wife and I who hunt my 300 acres - with ten food plots comprising 22 acres - plus stands not on food plots, maybe a couple dozen stands - the odds of us being in the right stand are much less than my neighbors with only one stand to hunt.

 

[Troubles Trees]

Here he is!

View attachment 30803

Nothing wrong with that friend! I am not ashamed to admit that I have piled up a ton of 1 1/2 year old spikes, forks and 6 points in my early years.
My friend and I were outdoorsmen early iin life always fishing together, shooting stuff with our BB guns and when we became old enough, we took the bow and gun course together. We had no mentor, nor were hunting shows much of a thing back then. We did read outdoor life an other magazines as well as buy and trade early Stan Potts and Drury Bros VHS tapes back and forth but we learned so much more from each others experiences and mistakes, we were our own mentors. The first 5 years chasing whitetails, I didn't have a stand and hated sitting on the ground, I was however one awesome tree scaler and learned to shimmy up a tree with my bow or gun on my back and stand in tree branches with much more success than sitting on the ground. Then came tree pegs and tree stands, today it is climbing sticks and COMFY tree stands lol it isn't uncommon for me to sit all day during the rut no matter the weather.
Today he and I look back at those years as some of the best years we've had, despite the fact that we only harvest much bigger and more mature bucks these days. It was a learning curve or as we call it "the practice years". I was about 35 years old when that all changed, my friend was about the same age. We talked enough about it that we decided to wait it out for bigger deer and give the little guys a pass and it paid off that first season so we stuck with that mentality ever since, and despite other friends/hunters in our group efforts, my friend and I consistently shoot the biggest bucks out of our group most years.

 

[SwampCat]

Another thing a lot of landowners fail to realize - is once you reach your buck:doe ratio goal - to keep your ratio where you want it, you must remove bucks and does in equal numbers. If you only shoot one or two bucks, and five or six does - your land will become buck heavy, while your doe numbers decline - reducing reproductive capacity. We typically try to remove about as many bucks as does. We never have, or are able to kill, three or four mature five year old bucks on the place, so we will always end up killing a couple 2.5 or 3.5 yr old bucks. I dont like to kill 1.5 yr old bucks, because you cant yet determine their antler potential. You can start seeing it in 2.5 and for sure 3.5 yr old deer. Typically, we will kill three or four does and three or four bucks. Generally, one buck will be a nice mature deer and the others will be something like a forkhorn 2.5 yr old or 6 pt 3.5 yr old. In my opinion, those are not deer to be ashamed of - our ability to hunt deer is a gift. Any deer is a treasure.

 

[yoderjac]

Another thing a lot of landowners fail to realize - is once you reach your buck:doe ratio goal - to keep your ratio where you want it, you must remove bucks and does in equal numbers. If you only shoot one or two bucks, and five or six does - your land will become buck heavy, while your doe numbers decline - reducing reproductive capacity. We typically try to remove about as many bucks as does. We never have, or are able to kill, three or four mature five year old bucks on the place, so we will always end up killing a couple 2.5 or 3.5 yr old bucks. I dont like to kill 1.5 yr old bucks, because you cant yet determine their antler potential. You can start seeing it in 2.5 and for sure 3.5 yr old deer. Typically, we will kill three or four does and three or four bucks. Generally, one buck will be a nice mature deer and the others will be something like a forkhorn 2.5 yr old or 6 pt 3.5 yr old. In my opinion, those are not deer to be ashamed of - our ability to hunt deer is a gift. Any deer is a treasure.

That might be a bit over simplified. Nothing to do with the shaming aspect, I agree completely with that. Each place is different, but our place is significantly impacted by immigration. That has an impact on buck-to-doe ratios. Unless you kill mom, most will force young bucks to leave the area as nature's way of keeping the DNA pool from getting too shallow. Without a hole in the social structure, for immigrating young bucks to fill, fewer come in than leave. We have the best summer quality food within about 3 miles. The biologist says that every time we shoot a doe and leave a hole in the social structure, the next summer when native foods get scarce deer from elsewhere start ranging looking for food. When they find our place, if there is a hole in the social structure, they tend to stay and re-home.

It is really hard to have too many bucks per doe. Even with much better habitat than the general area, lesser bucks will tend to leave if numbers get too high. I vaguely recall some study that indicated some change is the sex ratio between fawn being affected by the social structure as well. I'm not sure I've seen a case where a deer manager said they had too many bucks. Perhaps too few does (declining population), but never too many bucks. I presume that could happen in some extreme case but it would be pretty uncommon. If we shoot a few young bucks, we create holes that will be filled by extra incoming young bucks. We tend to save you young bucks for our novice hunters. If we don't shoot those bucks, the number entering and leaving will be about the same.

At our place, the real key is shooting does with button buck fawns. Those button bucks will tend to stay on our place more frequently since they are not pushed to leave. Their odds of survival go way up. Young bucks are most at risk when they are moving through unfamiliar territory. On top of that, we know Mom had great habitat, and that fawn will have had great habitat since birth. Young bucks immigrating in come from Mom's on less favorable habitat and had less favorable habit themselves for the first year or so.

Thanks,

Jack

 

[SwampCat]

That might be a bit over simplified. Nothing to do with the shaming aspect, I agree completely with that. Each place is different, but our place is significantly impacted by immigration. That has an impact on buck-to-doe ratios. Unless you kill mom, most will force young bucks to leave the area as nature's way of keeping the DNA pool from getting too shallow. Without a hole in the social structure, for immigrating young bucks to fill, fewer come in than leave. We have the best summer quality food within about 3 miles. The biologist says that every time we shoot a doe and leave a hole in the social structure, the next summer when native foods get scarce deer from elsewhere start ranging looking for food. When they find our place, if there is a hole in the social structure, they tend to stay and re-home.

It is really hard to have too many bucks per doe. Even with much better habitat than the general area, lesser bucks will tend to leave if numbers get too high. I vaguely recall some study that indicated some change is the sex ratio between fawn being affected by the social structure as well. I'm not sure I've seen a case where a deer manager said they had too many bucks. Perhaps too few does (declining population), but never too many bucks. I presume that could happen in some extreme case but it would be pretty uncommon. If we shoot a few young bucks, we create holes that will be filled by extra incoming young bucks. We tend to save you young bucks for our novice hunters. If we don't shoot those bucks, the number entering and leaving will be about the same.

At our place, the real key is shooting does with button buck fawns. Those button bucks will tend to stay on our place more frequently since they are not pushed to leave. Their odds of survival go way up. Young bucks are most at risk when they are moving through unfamiliar territory. On top of that, we know Mom had great habitat, and that fawn will have had great habitat since birth. Young bucks immigrating in come from Mom's on less favorable habitat and had less favorable habit themselves for the first year or so.

Thanks,

Jack

I dont know if we are lucky or not - but we have had more bucks than does on a number of occassions. We carried a 1:1 buck:doe ratio for a number of years - and even though we didnt kill any does, the neighbors did and overall deer numbers started to decline. At our place, a 1:2 buck:doe ratio works best to maintain numbers where that suit our property best. Too many bucks - just like too many does - can be a bad thing. If you have too many deer - it can be bucks that need to be removed in some circumstances - including ours

 

[yoderjac]

We have more bucks than does as well, and that is not a bad thing, our deer numbers are recovering from a perfect storm crash after the 2013 season. The too many deer problem is an issue when you exceed biological carrying capacity and the habitat begins to decline. Killing bucks has a very small impact on overall deer numbers compared to killing does. Removing a buck removes one deer now only. Removing a doe removes one deer now and many more in subsequent years.

In rare circumstances removing any deer, including spotted fawns can be the best strategies. I worked on one of those projects years ago. Well over a thousand acres was owned by a company. Our game department would conduct necropsy studies and tell them they had to allow hunting but it never happened. Turned out that company reported to another company division whose president was the local PETA president. They eventually sold the property to a developer. The BCC was very high but in spite of that, there was a 6' browse line under which nothing green survived (except pawpaw trees). The developer was concerned about future landscaping damage cost but was marketing the place as "come enjoy nature" so the wanted everything done on the QT with no firearms. Our suburban archery group was enlisted to help. The biologists gave us kill permits for out of season hunts and told us to shoot every deer we could. They said if we see a doe with fawns, shoot the doe and wait. The fawn will return and then shoot them. This was a severe case. Because it was never hunted before, the age structure and buck to doe ratio were not a problem. It was simply a case of too many deer for the BCC. That was one of the rare cases where the only time you were asked to pass a buck was when it was with a doe and you believed you could get a shot at the doe.

My point is that you don't need to harvest bucks in most cases to maintain a buck:doe ratio. Having more bucks than does is not a problem. In extreme cases, if you have too many deer for the BCC, it may be necessary to harvest every deer you can. You don't often see this case in areas that are gun hunted.

Thanks,

Jack

 

[SwampCat]

We have more bucks than does as well, and that is not a bad thing, our deer numbers are recovering from a perfect storm crash after the 2013 season. The too many deer problem is an issue when you exceed biological carrying capacity and the habitat begins to decline. Killing bucks has a very small impact on overall deer numbers compared to killing does. Removing a buck removes one deer now only. Removing a doe removes one deer now and many more in subsequent years.

In rare circumstances removing any deer, including spotted fawns can be the best strategies. I worked on one of those projects years ago. Well over a thousand acres was owned by a company. Our game department would conduct necropsy studies and tell them they had to allow hunting but it never happened. Turned out that company reported to another company division whose president was the local PETA president. They eventually sold the property to a developer. The BCC was very high but in spite of that, there was a 6' browse line under which nothing green survived (except pawpaw trees). The developer was concerned about future landscaping damage cost but was marketing the place as "come enjoy nature" so the wanted everything done on the QT with no firearms. Our suburban archery group was enlisted to help. The biologists gave us kill permits for out of season hunts and told us to shoot every deer we could. They said if we see a doe with fawns, shoot the doe and wait. The fawn will return and then shoot them. This was a severe case. Because it was never hunted before, the age structure and buck to doe ratio were not a problem. It was simply a case of too many deer for the BCC. That was one of the rare cases where the only time you were asked to pass a buck was when it was with a doe and you believed you could get a shot at the doe.

My point is that you don't need to harvest bucks in most cases to maintain a buck:doe ratio. Having more bucks than does is not a problem. In extreme cases, if you have too many deer for the BCC, it may be necessary to harvest every deer you can. You don't often see this case in areas that are gun hunted.

Thanks,

Jack

that is so true in many areas with too many deer and high fawn recruitment numbers. Dont assume that is anywhere near the case around my property.

 

[H20fwler]

I would generally agree. But if you are hunting on someone elses land and they have rules, youre obligated to follow those rules!

Last we had a big MEGA MEGA 3 yr old on our farm. We (the property owner and those of us that mainly hunt it) decided this deer had to get the pass just for the anticipation of what he could become. Well a bunch of us passed him including some pretty young hunters, and then gun season one of the guys from the cities came out and pounded him. He had specifically been told not to and watched videos of the buck the night before. The land owner said to make sure you id your target well so there are no "whoopsies". It was pretty awkward when the owner came back and that deer was on the meat pole. Embarrassed... I hope he was at least that. He took something from that deer and all of us who worked hard on that farm.

I understand and agree that every deer is a trophy... but sometimes its not your call. When you are a guest.

That made me think of this old vid when a guy on a big Texas HF cull hunt shot a huge breeder buck.

 

[yoderjac]

that is so true in many areas with too many deer and high fawn recruitment numbers. Dont assume that is anywhere near the case around my property.

Wasn't assuming anything about your place. Every place is different and there are always special circumstances. I would simply say that, in general, there is no need to harvest roughly as many bucks as does to maintain a 1:1 buck to doe ratio. It buck to doe ratios can favor bucks to a point, but it becomes self-correcting. Buck to doe ratios radically favored does in many areas because low deer populations from market hunting created the need for regulations. Those regulations strongly favored the survival of does. That created the ethos of yesteryear shooting does was frowned upon. As deer populations rebounded, progressive game departments began to alter regulations to favor the harvest of does. As deer/human conflicts increased, and organizations like QDMA preached letting young bucks walk, the ethos began to change.

Thanks,

Jack

 

[Dukslayr]

That made me think of this old vid when a guy on a big Texas HF cull hunt shot a huge breeder buck.

“I hope you brought your checkbook”. Oh man...the worst thing is he knew what he did before he pulled the trigger.

 

[Peplin Creek]

Some of the neighbors shoot 1 1/2 olds yearly.. it bothered me from two perspectives... 1.). Trying to grow larger bucks and taking one out. 2.) how many little bucks does one need to shoot before they challenge themselves shooting something bigger. Both were probably wrong mindsets honestly. I’ve come to learn that if your herd numbers are decent, they shoot the 1 1/2... then you can let the 3 1/2 go and he’ll get older. Plus some people just want to harvest some venison.. would a doe be better for that sure but a buck probably makes them feel more successful. I know try not to let it bother me... it’s not my deer herd anyway.

 

[Dukslayr]

Some of the neighbors shoot 1 1/2 olds yearly.. it bothered me from two perspectives... 1.). Trying to grow larger bucks and taking one out. 2.) how many little bucks does one need to shoot before they challenge themselves shooting something bigger. Both were probably wrong mindsets honestly. I’ve come to learn that if your herd numbers are decent, they shoot the 1 1/2... then you can let the 3 1/2 go and he’ll get older. Plus some people just want to harvest some venison.. would a doe be better for that sure but a buck probably makes them feel more successful. I know try not to let it bother me... it’s not my deer herd anyway.

I understand what you’re saying but I have a guy that leases the ground directly on my west and south border. He’s a nice enough guy and is constantly talking about how he’s after a “big one”, but invariably shoots a small buck right before he has to go home. He says he’d rather shoot a small buck than no buck. Obviously it’s his choice; harvest what you want (legally), but it’s always frustrating to hear him talk about his goals of killing a “big” (over 150”) deer when he keeps shooting the young ones. If you truly want to kill a big one I feel like you have to willing to know that there will be years that you don’t kill any...maybe shoot some does for meat instead of a 2.5 year old 120” deer. It doesn’t bother me so much him shooting the small deer as it does listening to him. :)