ORIGINAL: GMMAT
Hey Matt....how do you distinguish does? I mean.....I know some of the doe groups....but I'm never "sure". I could NEVER tell you how many individual deer I see every year. Just isn't possible where I hunt.
It's cool you can do that.
I can't distinguish between all of them, but 99% of them I can at least at my place in PA. Dan's place is different, his deer move around more and I don't put in as much time in the offseason to know and recognize the core family groups.
I've found that because of the bedding areas I've created from our logging project, and designated sanctuaries we leave alone, and the seperate food plots they feed in, they generally have a VERY small core area (the doe/fawn groups anyhow). This helps a lot to identify which ones are which. I alsowatch them all year long, and tend to get thousands (sometimes 10k+) pictures every year on the game cams and my father emails them to me every 2-3 days to keep tabs on what is showing up where. After the thousands of pics, and repeated sightings through the entire year when I'm there staying at the cabin and working on things and glassing, etc......you learn which family groups are which pretty easily.
Rob saw this when he came to my place, I told him before she showed up exactly what doe was going to show up, that she had a button buck and doe fawn with her, and exactly what she would look like. You get pretty familiar with them all I guess when your really improving the habitat and planting and then watching everything, they get much more predictable in patterns as well. I actually watched Rob's doe from this year give birth to her 2x fawns last spring from my cabin window.