MLDII flyover yesterday deer count

[dustinztx]

Biologist did the flyover yesterday morning on our 750 AC lease.

27 Bucks
36 Does
24 Fawns

The biologist said he also factors a 20% miss number. My calculations put the deer population at 1 deer for ever 7.3 AC and a 1.3 buck to doe ratio. Said it would be a couple of days before we know our tag allotment.

This my first lease MLD what should I expect for tag numbers?

[lovemylegacy]

Sounds like yall are moving up to III

[Peyton]

He'll probably recommend lowering the density and tightening the sex ratio.

You're at .75 bucks per doe. Did he tell you the breakdown of buck age structure? If you're low on mature bucks, he may not issue more than 5 or so buck tags.

[dustinztx]

He did not discuss age. One concern he did have was that 1/4 of the deer he suveyed was on a hill on our SE border said it was covered in deer. Since this our first year on the lease we are still learning but it does look like the previous hunters shot the top end deer. We have a lot of 3-4 yo.

[Encinal]

Why was that a concern (about the hill)? Deer don't evenly disperse... Especially doe groups.


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[cantexduck]

So one fly over is good enough to get numbers ?

[dustinztx]

Why was that a concern (about the hill)? Deer don't evenly disperse... Especially doe groups.


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I don't think it is an issue but that we are high fenced on 2 sides only and the hill is on the 2 sides that are low fenced and specifically where the low fences meet.

[dustinztx]

So one fly over is good enough to get numbers ?

Apparently so? They do 1 a year in August. From what I can tell the numbers are up over last year.

[walker1983]

I'll throw out 12F 6M as an educated guess. 20% of your total herd is 17.4 animals.

In a balanced herd w/ good age structure - most will base their annual harvest on their fawn crop. Low fence places have to factor in what other hunters on surrounding ranches are doing as well.

[Big pig]

Interesting. Thanks for sharing. Im sure we don't have that many head within our 1000 acre lease.

I would not think tighter ratio would as big a priority as meeting the carrying capacity. Seems low on fawn numbers.

Just my opinions, not a biologist.

BP

[dustinztx]

Just got the call from the biologist. 7 bucks and 11 does this year. We have 6-8 culls we are going to take out this year early.

[merlin]

Walker wins. Good call

[J-Bow]

Very interesting thanks for sharing. Good luck hunting this season. That's a lot of deer to clean

[jason86]

We did our fly over Saturday. Was really surprised our buck numbers were so low. We have bucks on camera that were not seen from the air. 7 or 8 that were frequently visiting one feeder. Very possible they are not living on our place. I think we are going to do a camera survey and see what that looks like as well.

Here are our numbers

Pasture 1
10 bucks
23 does
19 fawns

Pasture 2
14 bucks
33 does
23 fawns

Each pasture is 1200 acres

I also found this to be a good read on surveys

http://www.deermanagement.us/deer-management-surveys/deer-survey-methods-for-whitetail-deer-management/

[txwhitetail]

Any previous years numbers?