Howboutthemdawgs
5 year old buck +
Once again goes back to scale. 12,000 acres?? Something like that. I’m not knocking it. I’m just saying when most of us make management decisions we don’t have those luxuries
Herd management?
- Thread starter Catscratch
- Start date
I remember very little from my college biology classes, but I do remember the quote nature abhors a vacuum. Your property will either be a deer source or a deer sink in your general area - shoot more deer than average and outside deer will move to your place to fill in to the voids you have created. Shoot nothing and your deer will move out to fill the holes created by the neighboring hunters. If you remove a mature buck with the bottom 10% of antlers in your area, the buck that eventually fills in that void will likely be bigger than the one you remove unless you are unlucky. This is without regard to genetics, food, etc. - just pure statistics. This is assuming that the habitat in the area is pretty similar and the deer herd generally wants to be spread out evenly across the landscape.
Shooting an old buck with inferior antlers might remove an old bully buck, creating a void that is filled by your neighbor's up and coming booner!
Shooting an old buck with inferior antlers might remove an old bully buck, creating a void that is filled by your neighbor's up and coming booner!
Except of course we accomplish the same thing on our low fenced pasture. Effective deer herd mgt. always boils down to scale or circumstance . How can you get bucks to the oldest age classes?
jsasker007
5 year old buck +
What kind of buck to doe ratios are you trying to hold?
jsasker007
5 year old buck +
I'm guessing on my property it's probably close to 20 does for every 1 buck.
Howboutthemdawgs
5 year old buck +
I’m not arguing with you or diminishing anything. Most of us are hunting between 50 and 300 acres. Our expectations on management decisions carry way less weight compared to a) a high fence and b) a massive scale.
I doubt many of us own enough land that our deer dont get on someone elses land
he also has low fence ranch
I just talked to a neighbor who had killed a very unusual buck - easy to identify. He killed it exactly 1.5 miles from where I was getting pictures of it. He and his buddies have killed five bucks on his forty acres. We have killed one on my 350 acres. I have not baited like years past and it shows. More neighbors with pictures of my bachelor herd bucks than normal
Fair enough . Ive just been quickly scanning the posts with out much thought. I go back to what I understand the original question to be . We do shoot mature underperforming bucks with zero belief that it makes any difference genetically. However 1) Gives folks something to shoot. 2) Assures the buck removed will not kill one we hope to get to old age 3) One less mouth on the habitat. 4) Do not know what impact this has but a dead deer will not be breeding. 5) Age and nutrition ! Period !
All said though for most folks on smaller properties in reality they are habitat mgrs. hoping to influence deer behavior , not deer herd managers. That takes scale or circumstance.
Howboutthemdawgs
5 year old buck +
For the love of everything holy, I know baker has a low fence ranch too!
jsasker007
5 year old buck +
Location probably has a little bit to do with being able to keep deer on our land. Talking with a guy who was going bow hunting in South Dakota and he was hunting on a friend's 4,000 acre property. That's big enough to have some control over the herd but I don't know if the location/habitat is that great or optimal for deer?
Howboutthemdawgs
5 year old buck +
Spot on. Habitat not herd managers. My entire goal is to make my property more attractive than my neighbors. That’s it. It’s all I can do. Still doesn’t work because deer don’t know property lines and even if they did they have the desire and ability to roam.
Wind Gypsy
5 year old buck +
A good college friend of mine farms 60,000+ acres in North Dakota. It isn't a continuous chunk and he doesn't think he gets many bucks past 3 years old. They always travel a large enough range to be exposed to other hunters. I bet if he looked at his most isolated and sizeable chunk of cover and really focused on keeping the food there and minimizing intrusion he could save a few more but they still get to roaming out there where there is limited cover.
Catscratch
5 year old buck +
About a year ago I posted pics of an old 7pt. The overwhelming response is that I should shoot it. It needed to either be removed from the gene-pool (something I don't put a lot of stock in), or it needed to removed so another mature buck could take over his spot and resources. I didn't shoot him or his buddy, but they both disappeared from the face of the earth before last spring. I don't know if they left, got shot, ran over on the highway, died in a fight, or poached. It's not uncommon to find evidence any/all of those things to have happened. Regardless, I knew their fall territories and bedding area's pretty well and they aren't there this year. I think both deer were old enough to be considered mature.
Catscratch
5 year old buck +
Fast forward to this year. These 3 bucks have been frequenting the territory and bedding that the previous 2 bucks used to. I don't know if they are there "because" the other one's aren't, or if they'd been here regardless, or if they had overlapping ranges and are just now being more visible. I'd like to think that if the first 2 are dead that these 3 have taken over that spot. But, I don't know. I was hoping others would have similar situations to talk about.
T-Max
5 year old buck +
I think it was 2018 I hunted a buck with the biggest neck I have ever seen. He was an 8 pointer, bruiser of a buck and quite the bully. He would frequent a field that historically held more deer than anywhere else we hunted. It was not uncommon to see a couple dozen does in the field, but it was quite weird that he would be the only buck that year. I killed him and the very next DAY there was no less than a dozen bucks running that field with those does. Word must have traveled quick. 
I sent in his teeth and they came back 8.5 years old. It had the effect you are speaking of, but much much quicker. Those bucks were obviously already there, but afraid to show. Remarkable!
I sent in his teeth and they came back 8.5 years old. It had the effect you are speaking of, but much much quicker. Those bucks were obviously already there, but afraid to show. Remarkable!
Little testy aint you. Did not know someone had already mentioned it.
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