I wanted to get yall's opinion on this. When I think of harvesting doe I never think of doing it after the rut. There is a chance you could be shooting a doe that has bread with a monster buck. Wouldn't the best time to manage doe be in bow season or the very beginning of the season? Harvest the ones that arent with fawns?

Its seems like everyone waits till the end of the season to start managing doe and to me that doesnt make sense? What do yall think?

I have always waited to the end of the season w/the thought of having more does to attract more bucks. BUT next year I will be filling my doe tags as early as possible so I'm not taking out bred does.

I kill all mine asap. I dont wanna shoot bred does anymore.

The bred does argument doesn't make any sense. The deer could have been bred by any buck. There is no way to tell. You could just as easily be taking out a cull. It is just by chance.

You play this game already when taking out a doe. You don't know what bucks this doe might have been producing. She could be the biggest producer of trophy deer.

If you take a doe preseason from an area frequented by a large buck, you are shooting a doe that the buck could potentially breed.

Point of story, shoot does whenever, it doesn't matter, you are playing a game of chance every time you do.

I agree with Justin T. We took 43 does on the youth weekend the end of Oct and I'm hoping we take that many more on the doe hunts in January.

I disagree, shoot doe as soon as you can. Fewer doe to breed lessens the time a buck spends on the rut, thereby reducing the strain it puts on him physically, and increases his chances of a quick recovery. I guess if you feed protein it's not as big a deal, but I've seen good young bucks with tons of potential literally kill themselves in the rut. The bred doe thing doesn't really matter to me.

The only reason for shooting them as soon as possible is that people on our lease wait til the last second, and don't always shoot their deer.

I don't agree with the time a buck spends in the rut argument. The time a buck spends in the rut will depend on how long the does stay in heat. Their distribution of time spent in heat could be the same even with less does.

I think bucks will kill themselves in the rut regardless.

i agree with you rockinU plus you hit your culls at the same time and it lessens the hunting pressure when you start pursuing the trophy's

We always would take the does early, that way have more groceries to go around for rest of herd, besides does can pull vanishing act in late season.

WHy doesn't TP&WD set the doe season at the first of deer season and then start in on the regular season after taking does for 2 weeks?

Yeah, you would probably want to take them as early as possible. You want to keep as much pressure off the old guys as you can. Just makes more sense.

Shoot them early for two key reasons.

1. It will leave more browse for all those deer not harvested.

2. Fewer does will increase the intensity of the rut by forcing bucks to move more to find one in estrus.

They will, but if there are less doe in a bucks territory to cover, that is that many less miles he runs, that much less time he spends not eating, and generally being a fool. The fewer the doe, the sooner they are all covered, the sooner he lets up. Since a doe is only in true estrus for about 24 hours, numbers do matter. They don't all come in and go out at the same time, it is spread out.

Because quite often their fawns are not yet ready to be weaned...for some late fawns the first two weeks of October is too early to lose mama.

when they stand still long enough to shoot!