dan, i am certainly not trying to start an arguement, and i hope no one is taking it that way, just so you know, lol. however, i when i said that you said you had a small heard, i was just going off from a previous post that you had made, and in it, you didn' t state, when you were talking herd numbers, if you meant those on your property, or the surrounding area. also, on your 10,000 example, you have to remember, when you and i talk numbers, we are talking about bucks and all other deer combined, which is where your 7500 is coming from. biologists, however, would take that 7500, and dissect it into adult doe, button bucks, and fawn doe., and if your ADULT doe population only has on average one fawn per ADULT doe, that means you actually have an addition 2500 immature bucks running around(button bucks). if you shot 1000 anterless deer, with half being button bucks, that will still leave a total of 2000 button bucks around. so now you have 4500 fawn doe and adult doe kicking around still( 5000 minus the 500 shot during anterless season). take that 5000, just for kicks we will say every ADULT doe got bred, which is only 2500, multiply that by 2, you now have 5000 come spring in this group. out of that 5000, roughly 1500 are bucks! now, adding all of the bucks that were button bucks the year before, together with the older deer from before, you have still got 3500 adult bucks, 1500 button bucks, 5000 ADULT doe, and 1500 fawn doe. so what does that give you for a ratio, roughly 1 ADULT buck for every 1.4 ADULT doe. by the way, i really, really stink at math, so don' t be suprised if i am off, because i won' t be, lol. god, i hope a math teacher doesn' t read this, i would hate to get sent to the corner, lol. and you are right, those small bucks do get counted into the doe count when their heads look like mine! how is their winter browse doing, any chance of planting more cedar on your place, to help keep them around? i know our yards with cedar can really get hammered on when there is too high a population.