Mortality rate for deer in the wild?

Any idea what percentage of deer die in a given year that aren't shot by hunters? Our place is high fenced and just curious if say we had 50 deer on it in a given year how many might just die from predators, old age, disease, etc. Ill of course at times find one dead but Im sure many that die you dont find their bones or any sign they died.

10-15 percent based on age classes, predators, ratio of buck to doe and carrying capacity.

Doing some surveys will get you an idea, counting fawns I think the number may be pretty big.

There is an article on Tecomate.com in regard to this. Their S. Texas study revealed a natural mortality rate of 10-30% for bucks. Most died in the post rut period of January to March. Interestingly, they found coyotes can and did kill mature bucks in that period. The following statement was made..."managing for mature, trophy bucks is not very efficient because many bucks will die each year of natural causes." I expect there will be some surprise and disagreement with that statement.

My guess and that all it is would be 20% per year. My reasoning is that you will loose about 1/7 of a deer from old age and another 5% from other natural causes and predators. That's a little over 19%.

How about there is no way to accurately ascertain the mortality rate of wild / free range deer.

The estimates fall between 7% - 30% depending on the area and a whole host of variables.

Very true. Around here I would think predators are the largest contributing factor. From what I see around here is that probably close to 50% of the fawns born do not make it to adults.

You should take into account the number of hogs too...I have watched hogs kill a fawn and fight over it ripping it into pieces.

If there is only 7-30% die off every year wouldn't that indicate an ever increasing population? In some areas I bet road kills/cars not road hunting make up a good number.

We're 1.5 miles from the hwy but the way our land runs, it creates a low saddle that runs toward hwy. It's a natural funnel. 5 dead deer on the road so far in the past few months

Kinda like a pet. Take care of it and it will live. Fightin bucks can die, lightning can strike too. Haha. In 30 years of deer huning I have only seen 2 bucks in the wild hung up. It was in nothern Missouri in a corn field. I hear about dead bucks locked up and killed by more massive nothern deer in HF all the time. You folks got sexual frustrations trapped in a high fence. Dangerous. Just think if humans were forced to find a date in a locked down grid, it would get deadly. Disease and starvation is your biggest enemy along with snipers. Have fun, I like the thought of thinking the bucks I hunt are just off the reservation.

Not sure about mature deer however Advised by area biologist that 50% of fawns in my area are killed by yotes, I believe this as I have large number of yotes and see limited number of fawns. Last year saw one out of all deer we had on property. Really sad. I kill every yote I see. Killed 3 last deer season while on stand.

When the sun goes down it is truly amazing how many coyotes we have. You can walk down every road or trail on our property every morning and there are fresh coyote tracks on every square inch of it and fresh scat on half of it. We have fawns all over the place. Maybe its because we have good fawn cover?

^^^For sure. Since we got rid of cows, our bluestem and switchgrass has exploded, along with our deer population.

Interesting observation, we also have no stock keeping grass down.

Has to be. No cows eating down to bare limestone. Hard for deer to feel comfy with bovines running around.

I think it is because certain areas of the state have large amounts of rabbits and rats. Here in Bandera we don't have many of either. A few years ago I took my JD Dozer to my BILs place near Lytle and dozed about 50 acres of small mesquite. In every cactus there were rats and many cotton tails. There the coyotes can eat all those they want but here they eat Deer, Goats and Sheep.

Coyotes used to be rare in the western hill country. Guess they've moved back in? Not as many ranchers shooting them? What say ye', Don?

When we first moved here in 1963 I never saw or heard of a coyote. Then probably 10 years later we started loosing some sheep to coyotes. We got some 1080 collars and put the on old ewes that they said the coyotes would get first. The coyotes liked young sheep better. We got out of the sheep business. About 25 years ago I started raising Ibex. It worked for a while then the coyotes figured out how to get the young ones. I fenced in about a 20 acre trap 7 ft. high and everything was good for a couple of years. Then the coyotes figured out they could turn side ways and get through the wire and eat Ibex. then I put a hot wire 6 " off the ground on the inside of the fence and 2 hot wires one 6" and another 16" on the outside of the fence. So far so good. Now I have to keep my males that I want to keep in the enclosure for a about a year before I turn them out in the larger pasture. I have a good fence on most of my perimeter. About 3000' of it is 4"X4"X48" panel with net wire on top of that. The rest is 6' Stay Tuff predator proof. Even with all that I have to do things I don't talk about on here. It is a never ending battle. I maybe raised 4 fawns this year on 350 acres. I think the coyotes are just getting more numerous. Too many weekend owners around that think they are cute and like to hear them at night. Except when fido or their cat gets eaten.

We do have loads of rabbits and rats Don, probably has something to do with it as well.

A friend of mine has a place between Cotulla and Encinal. Quite a few years ago he had some Corsican and black sheep in about a 10 acre trap. LF with regular sheep and goat wire. Raised them for quite a few years. I even bought a couple of the rams from him. It surprised the heck out of me him being able to raise anything with all the coyotes around. Then a lion came into the area and that was the end of that. I guess the lion wanted more than just rats and rabbits.

i bet you might be doing some of the same things we do and don't talk about.

if you don't declare dull out war on them, they'll get the goods from you. Even at full out war, they still win a few.

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i shoot 'em on sight, whether deer hunting, hog hunting or whatever. it's taken a while to
convince the neighbors to do the same. the only way beside religiously trapping to stay on
top of 'em

We snare, trap, call, and shoot on sight and still lose several thousand dollars worth of livestock each year. We've had the helicopter but several bad neighbors won't let them overfly their place. Guess where the coyotes den up?

they'll convert after seeing/hearing lil' "fluffy" getting
dragged away squeeling, then finding a pile of bloody fur
and maybe a bloody cutesy pie collar