ORIGINAL: LebeauHunter

Allright Germ,

Of course we are all now on the same page about the fact that a deer's genetic makeup is set at birth,

but you are definitely on to something with the stress thing. I've been reading up and found the following from Deer Management 101 (Grant Woods):

"Suppressing sexual behavior can help young, subordinate bucks grow larger. Because their desire to breed is reduced, they spend less time participating in rutting activities like chasing, fighting and rut-marking. Instead of using valuable body resources during the rut, young bucks spend the fall feeding. Hence, they can put on additional weight and antler growth the following spring instead of replacing resources lost during the rut. . . . Young bucks receiving this growth opportunity have a much better chance of becoming larger bucks at maturity and more capble of becoming dominant." The book goes on to compare a malnourished kid in a third world country to a farm kid from Nebraska. Who knows what the genetic potential of the third world kid is?

The idea I was talking about that an imbalanced buck doe ratio can have on genetics (as opposed to deer not realizing their genetic potential) is also discussed:

"In a healthy, balanced herd, most large, agressive bucks that attain dominant status have favorable genes. Apparently, resistance to disease (health), large body size, and an aggressive nature are usually 'good characteristics favored by natural selcection. By breeding most of the does, these dominant bucks pass along their 'good' genetic traits."

This is a large post, but just wanted to see if we could come to some agreement on this stuff. There are a lot of good reasons to kill does and pass on small bucks, and the ones above are just a few.