vt; I said about 25 deer per sq. mile if that' s whay you mean by a small herd or do you mean the 5-6 deer that inhabit my property as their home range? If you start off with a 3:1 doe to buck ratio in a population of 10,000, you have 7500 does and 2500 bucks to start. There are say 1000 antlerless tags and unlimited buck tags issued. If the harvest is 20% of the deer (1000 antlerless & 1000 bucks), at the end of the hunting season would be 7000 does and 1000 bucks (7:1) remaining. Half of the antlerless deer harvested are young bucks. After birthing that would increase to 10500 does and 4500 bucks. The high ratio (approx.) is returned. If you see the way the buck population fluctuates you can see why I only see antlerless deer or button bucks. The older ones are like ghosts just to stay alive. The next season there would be a larger deer population so more bucks would be harvested.

This does bring up the fact that young (antlerless) bucks are easy to get incorporated in the doe count.

Dan O.