Every year I see what was once a ratio so badly outnumbered by doe - shift more in favor of bucks. In two plus months of scouting my zone 5 area- I have observed 4 doe and 3 fawns. I have counted 13 different bucks, of which they seem to be primarily 1 & 2 year olds. When I first started hunting this part of Z5 in 2002 I would say the ratio was probably 1 buck to 3 doe. Now looking more like 3 buck to one doe. Another year of unlimited antlerless from 9/10 to 1/31 certainly won't put it back to a more normal and healthy ratio.
What is the buck/doe ratio in your areas?
JackHarris
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Dan the fall bear hunt will hopefully make a real difference. That will just leave the out of control coyote population. I will be ready for them too.
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My spot is not big enough to really draw any conclusions and this is only the third year I hunt it. but last couple of years we had 10 or so does and fawns and a couple of bucks. This year I know of at least 6 regular bucks and only seen a couple of does. Kind of strange.
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Some of you guys need to do some reading on the reality of buck to doe ratios. I believe it's near biologically impossible for the ratio to be more than 4 or 5 doe to 1 buck. There is a ton of mis-information out there and many hunters just don't know what they are seeing, when they are seeing it.
For example: if you see a group of does and fawns...say 6 does with twins fawns each (18 deer)...of those 12 fawns, statistically at least 6, likely 7 or 8 of them are bucks(research shows males are born at a somewhat higher rate than females). You don't count fawns when figuring buck to doe ratios. So you actually have 6 does there, and say 3 small bucks come out in the field later. Your ratio is 2:1, yet most hunters would think they have 3 bucks for every 18 "does", or a 6 to 1 ratio, which is tremendously wrong. In reality, with 21 deer in the field, and 3 of them bucks, you're at a 2:1 ratio. I have no idea what you can be seeing to think you have a 15 to 1 ratio.
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Ok, I see someone beat me to it.
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30/1...I glassed the other night......30 doe, 1 buck at last light...not laying down reports without Wing....just through my binos!
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z23 has always been more doe than bucks and that's a 1 deer zone... this year my cams are showing more younger bucks than does it seems... maybe 50/50
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I can't take credit for it. It's not "my" way, it's just the way it's usually done; adult does to adult bucks. Fawns are not counted when figuring the ratio's. But, as the article in the link pointed out, research shows that the birth rate favors males slightly over females, so the ratio's really don't change much when figuring in fawns. You guys thinking you have 8, 10, 12 or 15 to 1 doe to buck might want to do some reading up on the subject.
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We must be opposite ends of z5... I am definitely about 3 antlered bucks to every 1 adult doe. But there is a ton of brown and down going on around me between Whittingham and the Nature's Conservancy hunts and the local trespassing farm gang.
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I'm in the southern part. Not sure about the exact ratio. What I am sure of is a lot fewer deer and more bucks per does. Seemed like you would see 10 or more does per buck 10 years ago.
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believe everything you read ??????????
In the 80's the herd was so out of whack in stanton that you would have 75 does come past you to see one small buck.( stanton mountain gun club didnt allow shooting does, but killed every antlered buck they could shoot each season )
was at that same time the state said we had 15 deer per square mile, yet I told a biologist I could drive him around a spot that was less than 4 miles around and show him 300.
guess what we saw 372.
last winter once gun season ended we had daily approx 75 deer a night in one field on the farm.
of those 7 were BB, not 1 buck .
guess the other 31 bucks were just well hidden somewhere else. or they were all in a field down the road.
which is highly unlikely since our farm had the best feed still available at that time
Go glass Exxon in Clintons fields with a spotting scope and let me know how many bucks you see there among the hundreds of does.
been hunting the same farms for over 40 years at this point.
Live to watch whats going on and believe I have a pretty good handle on what is there and whats not.
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Dan I for one don't doubt anything you type. It's interesting to see the disparity though, as unlimited antlerless and 5 months of doe-day has certainly made a big difference in the ratio around here... I started to observe about 3 years ago, that the bucks had pulled even or a bit ahead, last year and this year, it truly appears about 3 bucks per doe (excluding fawns).
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we had a period like that in Readington a few years back on 2 farms.
we didnt shoot a doe for three straight years on those farms, took our does on the farm that was loaded a zone over.
But still did take bucks off there.
still took a few years for the readington farms to bounce back. seemed the younger deer would lose their fawns by mid july.
yet now that their are mature does around the amount of fawns we are still seeing right now is the most in the last 10 years.
IF we shoot does there this year we will more than likely target younger does , leaving the more mature does there as broodstock
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^^^ not much I can do - it's what's going on in the area at large...
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Did you even read what I posted? Here is a blow up of it so you can see it addresses a scenario very close to what you posted, and illustrates how you don't have a 15:1 ratio. Number 5 in the chart places the post season/mortality at 90 to 1, which is a worse ratio than your example.
Go back and actually read what was posted, either the screen shot I put up or the link provided by Pathman.
Lets take your example of 75 deer, and 7 of them button bucks. That leaves 68 females, if you are correct and they were all does and not shed bucks, and we'll assume that the 7 button bucks were the only bucks around. Zone 10 has great habitat, so I would assume each doe having twin fawns is not out of the question. So that gives us 136 fawns, given an even male/female birth rate, that gives us 68 females, and 68 males. So, we have 136 females and 75 males in the herd. That's a little better than a 2:1 ratio.
If each doe only has one fawn, it's 34 female and 34 male fawns, and that means 102 females to 41 males, or a little worse than 2:1 ratio. And that's assuming there were no shed bucks in your count, or buttons you missed.
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Thats is taking the ratio that the deer having twins are having equal amounts of bucks to does.
problem is its been established in many other study's that when a herd is above its holding capacity it is normal for does to throw twin does, not throw 1/1.
its also been studied that in areas that have low dow densities that does throw 2 buck fawns , as they are stronger and more apt to survive naturally ( take out hunting pressure)
so as much as we want to twist numbers to lower the ratio other variables thrown in by mother nature can still skew the end result
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"its also been studied that in areas that have low dow densities that does throw 2 buck fawns , as they are stronger and more apt to survive naturally ( take out hunting pressure)"
That's exactly what I am seeing past several years. When I see twins, they are usually both buttons... Hence why "my" ratio seems to be skewed as non-fawn bucks outnumbering non-fawn does, 3 to 1.
That's exactly what I am seeing past several years. When I see twins, they are usually both buttons... Hence why "my" ratio seems to be skewed as non-fawn bucks outnumbering non-fawn does, 3 to 1.
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