Proper Cabrito is...6 weeks old.

Real veal isn’t born yet

A six-month old deer is a fawn. But at the end of the day, I'd still not have any concerns putting some spots on the ground under certain conditions.

Older does are the the first to die naturally anyways and shooting the younger does takes years out of the fawn production cycle. It's the fastest way to get a buck doe ratio in place if that is your plan. Shooting a fawn or a yearling is no less "sick" than shooting an old doe. Bringing death is just that, bringing death. Get over that. I knows a mgt program in place on a large ranch that called for 20% fawn reduction in the 2nd year and 40% in the 3rd as part of their antlerless harvest. Peoples pay big bucks to get on there.

I remember my 2nd time Nilgai hunting on a rather large ranch, let's say down 77 way. I was the guest of an extremely knowledgeable outdoorsman. Driving around the pasture, we stumbled on to the almost mythical set up where a Nilgai cow & young calf were about 200 yards away, upwind and somehow, without having seen us drive up on them. Gots outta the truck, grabbed the shooting sticks, the 270 and leveled down to shoot. My buddy asked me where I was aiming. I responded high and right behind her shoulder. He replied, "Don't shoot the cow, make sure to get that calf." The dinner fare provided that to be somes of the best advice I ever followed.

JCB, wanna expand on this post or anyone else? Thanaks, Daniel

Only deer I shoot with spots is from India

It’s a lot like ageing a buck when looking at the knees. Where I hunt a 3 year old buck will only show slight wear on the knees from laying down. A 4 year old will start to show noticeably more wear. By 7 years old our bucks will have knees as bald as my head.

When it comes to Does I have never tried to pin exact ages on them like we do our bucks, but knee wear is a good indicator of how mature they are. Type of ground the deer beds on can accelerate wear though. Where I hunt it’s all rock so knees will wear much quicker than areas of lots of grass.

Of course ageing deer is much more complicated than just looking at knee wear, but if all you are interested in is if a doe is mature or not the knees are a pretty good indicator.

Okay, I appreciate the information. I will try to take a good hard look at what I see tomorrow while doe hunting. Thanks, Daniel

This is what you want to see. This is a 5 year old buck from our place. If you see that on a doe you can bet it’s mature.

Yep. And they're face looks bony, square body with protruding hip bones. We just let ours die of natural causes though. No doe killed in our pasture. Our place was shot out when we bought it in '99. There may come a day when we need to kill one or two. That day is not here yet.