New lease: establishing harvest limits...

[B Littleton]

I'm on a new place in red river county with my two brothers and my dad. We're trying to decide what kind of harvest limits to set on ourselves to insure we don't over pressure the place. It's a 750 acre lease with about 450 acres of pasture and 300 acres if woods and cedar scrub. So far on camera we've seen two 8's, a six, two spikes, one 11, a group of 3 does with two fawns, and several pics if single does. Right now we are really in the business of meat over antlers, but we don't want to over pressure the place for the future as we'd like to be able to continue to hunt it for years to come. What would the green screen consensus say?

[TX_Hoghunter]

Hard to say without more information. My first suggestion would be to able kill mature bucks. No need to count ...if you see a mature buck you get to shot him. Leave all of the young bucks alone. Once you have been on the lease a couple of years you will have more data to work with.

-john

[B Littleton]

That's our plan as far as bucks go, more curious about shooting does. Thanks!

[JackFlash]

I doubt taking a couple does is gonna hurt.

[B Littleton]

Well, I already took one, and due to a poor tracking job didn;t find her until the next morning. with temps around 75 that night, the meat was no good when I found her the next morning. Just wondering if I should go after another doe. My brothers and dad would each like to take one as well.

[JeffJ]

Have you done any spotlight surveys? If your place is anything like the rest of the state killing 10 does isnt going to put a dent in your deer population.

[B Littleton]

Haven't done spotlight survey, all we know is what we've seen in the daylight and what we've seen on camera. I know Red River County has lower deer densities than other parts of the state, I think I heard it was around 15 per square mile, but not sure where that info came from.

[TX_Hoghunter]

I would suggest laying off the does until you know what you got.

-john

[bigbad243]

Haven't done spotlight survey, all we know is what we've seen in the daylight and what we've seen on camera. I know Red River County has lower deer densities than other parts of the state, I think I heard it was around 15 per square mile, but not sure where that info came from.

You won't be able to go on generalities for what you are trying to decide. The best thing to do is spot light survey as well as trail cam and in field surveys to try and establish what you have. Thinking about it a little differently, if you kill deer off your place, deer from other places will come back and fill their spot unless everyone around is killing a ton of deer. 750 acres is a lot, but not really to a deer.

[Kdog]

Kind of tough to say. If you each killed two doe that seems like from what your cameras are showing that is a lot. However you could easily have a lot more doe than you are seeing on cameras. 3-5 is pretty reasonable I think. Is there anyway to find our what the deer density is for the county? I know where I hunt for a few years we layed off the doe because we only seemed to have bucks. After 1-2 years of that their numbers really came up quick. So now I am more concerned about us having too many. Oh and we also feed protein an I think that has significantly helped our recruitment even in a drought.

[Tricky0352]

A good trail am survey would be your best bet. Put it up several in different spots for about a month. I read the best time to do this is January. Find distinguishing features so you don't count the same deer twice. After that, you will have your ratio. There is some formula out there that takes into account deer that don't cross the camera but I don't remember it. On a you get your counts and ratios, you can develop your plan for sustainable hunting.

[Mike Murphey]

How can you make asumptions on what to take without doing a deer count? You need to perform 3 spotlight surveys to see how many deer per acre you have before you can decide how many to take.
Spotlight surveys are not easy as you have work to do in the daytime before the night time survey. First map out your route, then take a trip in daylight and every quarter mile record the brush area to find out your field of view. The best method for this is to get with your state wildlife biologist and ask him or her to come out and talk to you about a survey for deer count. They will come out and explain the whole process and maybe go with you on your first survey to teach you the proper method.

[B Littleton]

Ok. sounds like a spotlight survey is the way to go. Is there any reason to not do it at this point in the season?

[bulltx50]

Biologist here, pm me and Ill see if I can lend some advice.

[kraigrrr]

if it were me.... the first year I would shoot 3+ year old bucks only... the older the better... I would lay off the does until I knew what I had... I have had my place for 3 years and have not taken a doe yet.... I did'nt see many the first couple of years now I have several... also, as for the bucks I didn't see but about 6-8 the first year and last year I saw about 18 .... This year I have already seen more deer while in the stand thean the past 3 together... we have a couple feeders going and just put in 2 1.5 acre food plots... I only see it getting better... Now if I could just shoot one!!! Best of luck to you!