Now all habitat available to the deer is being considered because the health of the deer is part of the management direction. Since deer herd health is determined by the adult doe reproductive rates obviously all of the habitat available to the doe being examined is being considered. If that doe had good enough food, whether it was forest habitat, farm crop habitat or someone’s garden or shrubs it was all considered as food eaten by that doe and used by her to either be healthy enough or not healthy enough to produce the number fawns she was carrying.

Since the reproductive rate data only counts the number of fawns that dead doe was carrying at the time she died it doesn’t really tell us if those fawns were going to be born at the required weight to have survived after they were born. It doesn’t matter how many were born if the majority of them die within days of being born, When that happens they are just as none existent as if they had never been born. That is why other factors, such as forest health, also need to be factored into that same equation when determining if all is well or if things are still too tentative to allow the herd to increase.