Shoot more does or shoot none during drought?

Is it better to take more doe off my hill country lease this year, or is it better to shoot none, knowing its a tough year.

On the one hand, the drought is tough and surely will kill some deer. On the other, if there is too many, than maybe if we take a few, it will help the others out. Opinions?

I talked to my local TPWD biologist about this topic. He said this year it's critical to take all does and culls to keep numbers in check. This will benefit overall herd health.

Agree.....shoot em

I don't think the drought will kill as many deer as one might think. Sure there will some mortality, but we as hunters still need to do our part in keeping the numbers in check....

I'm going to play it by ear and wait to see what the herd looks like come October. If I'm seeing a lot of deer (which is normal) and they look poor, I'll probably start whacking them. If the numbers are already way low, or if the deer look normal, I won't take as many.

BTW - This is on a large low fence ranch in an area where the deer typically travel long distances to food and water.

The bad thing about killing them is that you are going to try to take the does that are in the best shape. That leaves the ones that really need to be gotten rid of.

I would not do anything without a survey to tell me what was there. You can't manage numbers by guessing. I would enlist the help of your TPWD biolgist in your county and get his onsight analysis of you exact situation. Hard for anyone else to you what to do based only off of your OP.

+1. Deer management is site specific. Especially when talking numbers, habitat etc.

I plan on shooting several

Ok, good points its Coryell County, Southeast of Evant near "Bee Cave Road"

I will get in touch with the game biologist.

Good plan and do it quick as those guys are loaded down with surveys already. Plan to help him so he can show you how to survey so you can do your own in the future.

Good call Ranchman, definitely site specific.

You are correct if we have have a wet and mild fall & winter.

I agree with others that you need to do the surveys and so forth to determie your required harvest based on carying capacity, but culling shouldnt be too much different, you are going to want to remove the bottom of the barrel of what you have the inferior will be that much more worse off.

matt

We will continue using game cameras as well as sight/surveys to see what we have.....

We started putting them out 4 weeks ago and we run them through January. We also put them out at the end of the season when we start protein feeding to see which deer "made it"

I'm going to get my 2 this year. According to trail cams and deer sightings on my place we can stand to cull some. Hopefully the wife and kids can punch some tags this year too. The outcome of this drought on the deer herd won't be seen for a couple years I read on another forum, so gonna try to do my part and fill the freezer at the same time.

The deer in that area aren't hurting at all....yet. They actually caught a couple of rains back in late May and early June that's made a huge difference.

We will be taking them in line with our survey but I can see taking more because of the tough conditions

This is the approach we will take in Comal cty.and Real cty.

Well, at our place in W. Llano county the deer can be as dense as 6 acres per, though it varies slightly. With low native soil nutrients it's typical that we need to keep numbers in check. This year even more so with lack of any good forbes. That being said, the early Mesquite beans might just save our bacon, if we can ever get just a little rain.

For the places that didn't get adequate rain and your local browse sucks, after you get your numbers down, you should be okay on the does, but when you start talking about culling I can see people start shooting spikes like crazy and you are more than likely taking out 1.5's and 2.5's that would be 4 pts or 6 pts or possibly better in a good year. I'm just saying I'd look at them really close before I pulled the trigger.

saw article from P & W saying fawn survival expected to be low, maybe not as bad a 2009 when some placed in s texas has <10%%

seems best to not kill them IF there is enough food

By the time deer season comes around there may not be any deer for us to shoot on our place. They are all leaving for the river and lake. Haven't seen a deer or tracks in a couple of weeks now.

That decision will be made after we run our annual September survey.

Maybe the AR's will catch a break this season. Now we can blame the drought!

We start our surveys on sept.15


I will tell you this-

The property I hunt is VERY overstocked on doe, I hunt in Oklahoma and there has been some rainfall.

I WILL BE TAKING EVERY OPORTUNITY TO LOWER THE POPULATION!

Our Biologist sent a letter out a couple of weeks ago that stated that we needed to kill every doe we are allotted and do it early in the season. We are MLD3 and he wants all our does shot in October.

I was hog hunting last sat night... Watched a 9 point
Feed at 2am he looked good not poor by no means
Also seen a couple of does eastland co
I think there all ok

The carrying cappacity of the land has been reduced. Shoot them.

However, I think the deer herd should be kept to levels that can survive a drought even in non drought years. I'd look at the condition of the deer. If they look thinner than normal, I'd shoot more. If they look about the same, I'd shoot the same number.

Thanks for the opinions fellows. I called and left a message with the biologist for Coryell county and he echoed what most are saying. Shoot them and shoot them early.

On a side note, he was really friendly and actually returned my call.