Gene Management

[bscofield]

I wondered if people here practice GENE MANAGEMENT. The place I hunt seems to have a lot of one-antlered deer around. I wonder if this is just coincidence or if thereare some bad genes going around. If the latter, do any of you herd management guys try to take out bad genes like this with your second or third buck tags?

[blakefrautschi]

it depends, sometimes ill let a freak walk, because i hope ill see him next year when he is a bigger freak, but it really depends on what the deer acually looks like. so i do think of it, but im not really strict.

[demoIL]

Not to an extreme but in the past couple years we have started to see a few half racked bucks and have agreed to remove them from the herd at first chance. They are half racked year after year and each year we see more so it's time for that to end or slow down if we can help it..

[MILLERTIME10]

I watched a show that said they tried to manage the genes on1 10,000 acre section and manage age on another 10,000 acre sectionon the King Ranch for 8-10 years. Long story short, by strictly trying to manage the inferioir bucks out on one area and not the other, by the end of the study, they still could not tell any difference between the 2 deer herds.

I may have just butchered that up, but hopefully you get my drift. Basically, it would be nearly impossible to actually change the genetic make up of a herd unless you wiped every deer out and replaced them with an entire herd of deer holding good genes.

The main things that I worry about is, buck:doe ratio, age, and nutrition. I let mother nature take care of the rest. Sometimes if you give that one-antlered deer good nutrition and let him grow then he will turn out to be a trophy. Most one-antlered deer and spikes are only yearlings or 1 1/2 yr olds. More than likely, the reason you see more of these young deer is because they make themselves more visible than the older structured deer do, so in a sense, it looks like you have more of these deer than quality mature deer. In reality, you may not, the older ones are just smarter and nocturnal.


My best advice, let em grow.