Low Fawn Recruitment

SwampCat

5 year old buck +
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Probably the main reason, below, my fawn recruitment is so low
 
That sucks. Predators taking out an unhealthy percentage. Sure would expect to see more fawns with that many does.
 
Couple thoughts:
1. Looks like recruitment was pretty good fairly recently.
2. If I were a coyote, you have at least one excellent spot for them to target.
My fawn recruitment over the past ten years has run from .4 to .6 - with the last few years being closer to the .4 fawns per doe number. We dont shoot but one or two does a year off 350 acres. Personal opinion - I dont feel like we have a lot of coyotes - and our coyotes have always fed fairly heavily on piglets and scavenged pig carcasses the land owners killed. But over the past year or so, USDA and NRCS have concentrated hog trapping in my area. I have gone from killing 153 hogs in six months to getting a picture of the same four hogs twice in the last six months. I think the yotes have lost a huge component of their food source and they are having to rely on other food sources, now. We have very few rabbits, mice, rats, game birds, etc for coyotes to eat.
 
My fawn recruitment over the past ten years has run from .4 to .6 - with the last few years being closer to the .4 fawns per doe number. We dont shoot but one or two does a year off 350 acres. Personal opinion - I dont feel like we have a lot of coyotes - and our coyotes have always fed fairly heavily on piglets and scavenged pig carcasses the land owners killed. But over the past year or so, USDA and NRCS have concentrated hog trapping in my area. I have gone from killing 153 hogs in six months to getting a picture of the same four hogs twice in the last six months. I think the yotes have lost a huge component of their food source and they are having to rely on other food sources, now. We have very few rabbits, mice, rats, game birds, etc for coyotes to eat.
Seems to me if population of coyotes has been inflated by the abundant hog population then it will fix itself in a few years as the carrying capacity of the land has changed for the otes. The coyote population should drop naturally although it may take a few years.
 
Do you think there's any density-dependent processes coming into play along with predators? Seems like a pretty good number of deer there.
 
Do you think there's any density-dependent processes coming into play along with predators? Seems like a pretty good number of deer there.
I dont really think so. I asked our state’s head deer biologist if fetal or birth rates in does tended to decline as population density increased and he said no unless they were really stressed. The g&f has been out on the next door neighbors 1000 acres - where deer population is an estimated deer per five acres - and they said the habitat did not show excessive deer utilization.

The end of June this same group of does had five fawns and now they have half as many. They are giving birth - the fawns just arent living.
 
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Probably the main reason, below, my fawn recruitment is so low
Depending on the birth date, the fawns may still be in the staying away from deer other than their mothers. On our place, I'll see pictures of adult does similar to this one (minus the feeder) with no fawns. However, on the trail cameras I see fawns with their mother. I did notice a reduction in the number of does with two fawns this year. This past season we harvested a couple of older does that were "homebodies," including one that had triplets last year. Most of the does with fawns are younger ones this year, so the single fawn is not surprising.

This is why we make annual adjustments to our harvest plans. I hope you see more fawns during deer season.
 
Brooding and fawning cover are hard to keep in the Deep South. Succession just happens so fast, especially in wet years.
 
Swampcat your estimated deer numbers per mile are 128 based on your equation above. Please tell me math is wrong.
 
Swampcat your estimated deer numbers per mile are 128 based on your equation above. Please tell me math is wrong.
You are correct - but also realize those numbers are very local to specific properties and all the deer dont stay on those properties all the time. My 1000 acre neighbor allows three people to bowhunt his place - one of which is me and I am confined to his 100 acres that join me. No guns. You can kill one deer - any deer - as long as you mount it. In six years I have hunted the place, I have not killed one, his nephew has killed six, and one other hunter has killed one. Seven deer off 1000 acres in six years. None of those were does. Off my 350 acres, plus another 70 acres I control, we probably ave two bucks and one doe per year. So yes, we have a lot of deer. But, properties around us do not have that many deer. I work hard to keep as many on my place with a lot of cover, 30 acres of food plots, and six bait sites. We rarely hunt the bait sites - maybe one of the grand daughters - we do hunt the food plots. On my camera survey last year, I had 68 unique deer - which would theoretically be very close to your number quoted. But to be honest, I consider my camera surveys more for trends and an indication of buck:doe ratios and fawn recruitment. I have seen, on a number of occasions, more than 50 deer on an evening ride around the place. It has taken a long time and a lot of effort to get here. We did not kill a doe for seven years.

But something that always kind of lets the wind out of my sails when I think of how successful my deer management program has been - is my 1000 acre cattle ranching neighbor who sprays broadleaves and plants fescue. No food plots. No feeders. He does one thing for the benefit of deer - and it takes him no effort or money to accomplish a deer density the same as mine - trigger control😀
 
I worried a lot about fawn recruitment numbers in the .4/.5 range. I trapped, I created fawning habitat, I planted food plots - and still the number did not change. I finally figured out it was easier to increase the number of does than increase the fawn recruitment numbers. 30 does bear more fawns at .5 fawns per doe than 10 does at 1 fawn per doe. We are very protective of our does. When I first bought my place over 20 years ago we averaged seeing a deer or two every other hunt. Not all that uncommon to see 20 deer per hunt. Some areas of my property seem to have better fawn numbers than others. The Sept camera survey will tell the tale.
 
An interesting fawn predation study below - and may or may not be representative of other areas.


One of the things determined in this study was:

“Additionally, we detected only weak support for bedsite cover as a covariate to neonate survival, which indicates that mitigating effects of coyote predation on neonates may be more complicated than simply managing for increased hiding cover.”

I have seen his mentioned in more than this study
 
The studies on turkey and deer recruitment all indicate quality habitats and predator control is best supported by a burn rotation. Trapping and shooting coyotes and other predators is a piece of the puzzle, but burns are the foundation. I am actually surprised how little we discuss burns on this forum.
 
The studies on turkey and deer recruitment all indicate quality habitats and predator control is best supported by a burn rotation. Trapping and shooting coyotes and other predators is a piece of the puzzle, but burns are the foundation. I am actually surprised how little we discuss burns on this forum.
This was an excellent episode, where they dove into the studies showing just that, and how burning reduced predator numbers.

 
But something that always kind of lets the wind out of my sails when I think of how successful my deer management program has been - is my 1000 acre cattle ranching neighbor who sprays broadleaves and plants fescue. No food plots. No feeders. He does one thing for the benefit of deer - and it takes him no effort or money to accomplish a deer density the same as mine - trigger control😀
But, you have much better groceries than he does, so I would think the nutritional plane is higher because of your work. Just think if the nutritional plane was raised on that 1000 acres too. The deer would definitely have a better diet than they are getting now over there. Diet makes a big difference in what deer exhibit in both body and rack.
 
This was an excellent episode, where they dove into the studies showing just that, and how burning reduced predator numbers.

Thanks for sharing. I hope many of our forum members will give this episode a listening. The research Craig Harper has done (and will be publishing soon) supports the same conclusions for deer.
 
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Coyotes absolutely hammer fawns and it doesn’t take many to make an impact. I recently read where they either kill 70% of fawns in some areas or they are responsible for 70% of the fawn mortality. I can’t recall exactly which one it was, but I’m assuming the later. Either way, they are fawn killers. Very hard to trap if you don’t know what you’re doing and I don’t…
 
@SwampCat we have talked a lot about your fawn recruitment on here.

It seems like most of the things you have tried haven’t worked very well. It might be time to think outside the box.

Also are you basing your numbers on camera surveys? How many cameras do you run full time?
 
I can remember when I first moved to Arkansas in 1980. I moved just south of USFS, and was surrounded by hundreds of thousands of acres of commercial pine timberlands. The skies would be full of smoke in late winter, early spring. Most of the USFS lands in that area have become wilderness and burning has stopped and the commercial timber managers have changed their ways and rarely burn anymore. I dont remember seeing a prescribed fire anywhere around me in the past five years.

I think a big difference, in the podcast - it was mentioned the burning was in longleaf pine - which is a fire related species and much more likely to be burned now than other forested areas. Fire - at least in my area - is a disappearing management tool - pretty much already disappeared.
 
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