OK you guys went about 3 pages in the time I typed this. It still should be applicable.


I think the reason this gets debated up and down is because no 2 states are the same, and people who come from overhunted, poor habitat states have a very difficult time understanding how management tactics in “big” buck states can be applied to their home state, because they’ve lived their entire lives thinking it wasn’t possible.

The premise for building a healthy herd is so basic and simple, but the actual implementation across a state is more complex that rocket science.(at least rocket science follows basic rules of physics and doesn’t have to deal with human bias)

Balance the available food, with the number of deer it can support that reduces competition for food. Balance the buck:doe ratio, and allow for a proper age structure.

First we’ll start with food and overall population balance. The more food available, the larger number of deer that can be supported. Average land in Iowa probably holds more food than average land in NY, so they can have more total deer. So now you’ve got a lot of deer (but not to the point of building unhealthy competition for food), & a relatively low hunter population. When you have a lot of healthy deer, a lot of fawns are going to be born each year, which means a lot of does need to be taken out to account for the new mouths to feed. Now go to NY, where the overall food is less, the over all population is less, and therefore fawn production is less. Not as many does need to be taken, but it is still as integral to keeping the balance as in a high deer density. Now bring hunter numbers in, and Iowa has fewer hunters who need to shoot more does=very liberal bag limits. NY has many more hunters, with fewer deer needed to be taken= more restrictive bag limits.
So both states in this case are managing for the exact same goal, but have to do so in very different ways.

Now lets move on to bucks. This seems to be a little more complex, but the underlying factor is if you let a well fed buck reach maturity, he’s most likely going to be pretty big. NOW some of these next “factors” are things I’ve read and not sure how much they truly impact things but it does make sense. Food, this is obvious, give a buck good food and it will grow to its potential. Stress- This is the tricky one. I’ve heard bucks that are overly stress, tend to not grow as big of antlers. Now I’ve read stress can come from many factors including competition for food, trying to breed too many does, and being overly hunted. We’ll take away the competition for food, cause in our ideal world we solved that issue. So now you have the “too many does” topic. When the ratio is out of whack, bucks overly exert themselves trying to breed all the does out there. In doing so, they weaken themselves more than nature accounted for, and thus take longer to recover thru the winter, and less energy goes into antler & body growth. Also, an unbalanced herd(one made nearly entirely of young bucks) brings more young bucks into the breeding arena and causes the above mentioned stress issues. Their energy isn’t going into growing and developing, its going to breeding and recovering. And the final stress factor is extreme hunting pressure. I’m only throwing this is cause I read it somewhere, it may or may not be valid. Some say that excess stress on animals due to hunting pressure can cause them slight overall loss in reaching potential body/antler growth.

OK its taken me half the morning to type this up. I still have more to say but this should be good to give you guys something to chew on.