shooting does
I'm having more trouble than ever with shooting does on my property. Not because I haven't had the opportunity. I have 15 acres surounded by a couple of hundred with very little hunting pressure. I have 10 antlerless deer on my place almost daily; 4 adult does and their young, 3 of which are button bucks. I've killed a lot of deer in 35 years of hunting; many were does. The more I get involved with herd management, the more I study the deer. The problem is I've gotten to know them, individually. If you watch carefully, you will see adult does watch other adult does out of the corner of their eye and can quickly determine dominance. You get to know which doe you're seeing by the coloration of one of her fawns and in one case one of these does has two button buck fawns. I don't enjoy shooting a doe in front of her fawns, or a fawn in back of its mother. It's something I'll have to do. I have too many deer. I see plenty of bucks, 9 so far this year with 2 in the 135-140 range. I have no problem shooting a 2 1/2 year old or older buck. They're loners and other deer seem not to miss them. I killed a B&C buck here last year...but I have to shoot some does. Nobody else will. Not many hunters here and one neighbor's a borderline anti. I'm wondering if anyone else has felt this way. I suspect so. I plan to kill one of these does Saturday. Maybe I'll be able to take her doe fawn also. Legal where I live. I'm not looking forward to it. It's a job; a responsibility for being a hunter. I don't think it would help having someone else do it, they might not do it right. Wish me luck as I do you, for a quick, clean kill. Nothing robs a man of his heart to hunt like an unrecoved dying deer.