Does this year??

[cehorn]

What are y'all doing with does this year? Considering the drought I can see 2 extreme sides with one being shoot more does than normal to remove mouths & help out range conditions and the other being leave all does to have more fawns since this years fawn crop may be nothing. With option 2 assuming a normal year next year does would need to be hammered to get back to numbers next year. I guess the third option is do the same as always and take a normal amount of does. So what are y'all planning on doing and why?

[DUKFVR]

Maybe 1 or 2. Our deer have a rough time with all the yotes around us. This year all the surrounding ranches are pretty bare for cover with the drought. We have alot of cover with no cows ,but dang yotes are always roaming.

[texasdeerhunter]

We haven’t been affected as bad by the drought, and we have too many deer on our property, so we are going to be aggressive on our doe harvest

[cehorn]

Looking at TC pics we have a few fawns showing up and the does don't look as bad as expected. We have been feeding and we got a good soaking rain in mid June that greened everything up for a bit. It is dry as a bone now but the deer don't look as bad as they could. We may shoot a few does but I don't think it will be as many as a normal year.

[Hogmauler]

My plan for my exemption was to shoot does this year and no bucks. Will check with the TP &W biologist and see what he recommends this year

[Big Lee]

I've been invited on 3 doe hunts. 2 are MLD.

I'd hunt as normal. As droughts are normal. Nothing new.

[Hills of Texas]

Hunt as you normally would. Deer are overpopulated in most areas in Texas. Get the numbers down and they will benefit in the future.

[Geezy Rider]

I’ll hunt the same as always. One buck two does if I have room in the freezer.

[deerwatcher51]

We haven’t been affected as bad by the drought, and we have too many deer on our property, so we are going to be aggressive on our doe harvest

This except does and bucks.

[Big pig]

I've been invited on 3 doe hunts. 2 are MLD.

I'd hunt as normal. As droughts are normal. Nothing new.

Worst drought in 70 years in “the Big Country”.
This ain’t normal. 60 days over 100 degrees prior to August.

We won’t be harvesting any does. I was trying to raise numbers pre fought.

[Bayouboy]

My plan is to turn does into cutlets and hamburger meat.

[Top Of Texas]

Although the majority of Texas is carrying too many whitetail deer, that remains a site specific question. It comes up about every 7-12 years, our typical wet/dry cycle. I could rattle on for pages on the subject, but will suffice here to boil it down to 3 basic questions.

1. What are the quality browse plants in your area, how much do you have, and what condition are they in? This trumps #1 & #2 below if extreme either way. If you can't find any, or those you can find are either hedged-up or are big trees with a browse line, then go doe killing with vengeance. Don't confuse with livestock use. If quality browse plants are abundant, have long shoots, and seedlings that are knee to head high, then reduce doe harvest.

2. What has the population been doing since 2012? Do you have structured, science based population estimates? If steady or exponential growth then consider doe harvest.

3. How many contiguous acres could be managed? The Kerr Wildlife Management Area, several thousand acres, found out how difficult it is to control population growth back in the late 60's-early 70's. The original motivation for high fence. In most average cases in Texas, a cooperative effort amongst neighbors is needed.

The large properties with few hunters and abused browse are the ones in a real pickle but with great opportunity in a drought year.

[bfree]

I know we are taking another look at the numbers on the lease. Camera survey was good, fawns a little low as we thought it might be with the drought. We did have 3 lighting strikes that took out about 700 acres, so we are thinking, debating and a lot of arguing over the numbers for this year. Going to interesting to see what the state Bio comes back with.

We have a good doe buck ratio and tightly managed yearly.

I guess the questions are:

Same strategy as always.
Take a few more then normal to relief stress on the browse.
Or take fewer than the normal years harvest. Which I think is heavily dependent on the survey numbers!

Any thoughts

[Kenner97]

We do not have a shortage of does and have seen plenty of fawns, so we are hunting as normal and actually probably increase how many does we take.

[Texashookset]

Sticking to our allocated count this year for now anyway. Last year we came up short again of burning through all the doe tags.