Ideal Herd Composition and Numbers

[DeadEyeB]

I talked to my local biologist about carrying capacity in South TX he said 1 deer per 10-20 acres is ideal. QDM says 1:1 ratio or as close to it for doe/buck.

Maintain something close to those numbers and allow bucks/doe to age out and you ought to have a pretty good herd overall.

It's super difficult to manage or even get accurate counts w/out your neighbors help if you are low fenced.

Biologist did say if you can get everyone to do a visual feeder count around the same times he could get a pretty good idea of density & ratio. Hard part is getting in contact with the neighbors. You'd need to do probably 500-1000 acres area at least.

Keep in mind your local biologist is listed on txpwd website. You can shoot them an email and they can probably help to some degree.

[elgato]

Recognizing this is a purely hypothetical question with more unknowns than knowns managing a herd in a vacuum I'll take a swipe at an answer from an entirely different perspective.

I think you only need enough does to meet recruitment goals. Assume you are removing 30% of the herd every year either from harvest or natural mortality. Thats 30 deer based on your 100 deer herd.

Assume this herd is in East Tx where fawn survival is more consistent than S. Tx and lets make fawn survival 50%{ certainly could be higher on well managed land.} Thus you need enough does to recruit 60 fawns believing you will lose half of them. Easy to believe 40 mature does should achieve or exceed this. If the habitat on this property is well managed you could probably get by with 30 does. Any more does and you will constantly be fighting harvest to keep herd in check.

this gives you 60-70 bucks. Anything wrong with that? At least half the bucks should be 4-8+ years old. Thats 30-35 mature bucks. More exciting for the hunters with more targets available and more mature bucks creating the 'opportunity ' that some are superstars.

The downside of a ratio with more bucks than does is you do get more fighting mortality. But without question that will happen at 1:1 as well anyone with a 1:1 herd knows.

To increase fawn recruitment, you do not shoot the mature does which are better mothers and more likely to successfully raise twins. The focus is on removing female fawns which take a couple years to start consistently producing twins. Following this strategy you are far more likely to get by with only 30 mature does...or less, making more room for additional bucks. Why do you need any extra does other than what is required to meet recruitment goals ? Would you rather spend your time afield hunting bucks with minimal doe harvest required?

Wanna see a dynamic rut? Get a 2:1 b/d ratio. Make this magical property 2000 acres with 1 deer to 20 acres, have 200 acres of year round food plots and a well managed timber program creating dense east Tx. thickets and abundant browse in the woods and you have created an incredible and challenging place to hunt. Well fed deer with 1800 acres of thickets, oak trees and natural browse can be really hard to find