You guys make it sound like horn hunting is a bad thing?

As for what we do, we usually do a helicopter survery every couple of years, and spotlight surveys a couple times a year. Our buck:doe ratio has been WAY out of whack, so all hunters must fill all their doe tags. Way too many hunters don't shoot does, and as a result, we've inherited part of the problem. Ratios started at about 10:1, and have gone down to about 4:1. The goal is 1:1. When the ratio was way off, we started seeing some genetic anomalies we wouldn't be seeing with a proper buck:doe ratio. When the ratio is that far off, you have spikes and other deer that nature would never have allowed to reproduce breeding does. With a proper buck:doe ratio, the good bucks would be able to claim all breeding age does and prevent this. However, with so few bucks and so many does, management bucks were allowed to reproduce.

The deer population here is often at carrying capacity, if not above, so it takes a fairly large annual harvest to keep it in check. This last year, when things turned off dry, fawn survival was almost non-existent. The harvest was not high enough for the conditions. Our county only allows hunters 1 buck and2 antlerless. There is talk of moving us to a 2 buck county, with one tag specifically for management bucks. I am all for that. I would also like to see us increased to a 4 or 5 doe county. We still have too many hunters killing only bucks, and the ones that would kill does need to be able to kill more.