There is such a thing as doe fever.

I have a friend who more than once shot very small does thinking they were much bigger than they were. He simply misjudges the size. One of them fit in the "size of a dog" category--small enough that after field dressing, one of the hunting party held it up by the hind legs like you would a rabbit.

The beauty part is that it provided some of the best razzing and obnoxious comments to ever come out of deer camp.
The aforementioned deer was actually a buttons buck and he shot it through the hindquarters. He's jovial, enthusiaistic, and always interjecting things like "Shoot big mama does so we get big bucks." If you want to get teased mercilessly in deer camp, be gung-ho about shooting big does, and then pop Bambi the Buttons Buck in the rear end.