Whitey & his consorts
Let us assume that 10 Bucks and 20 Doe generally live within a 300 acre area. Along comes breeding time for the 20. Buck #1 finds a ripe female (Doe #1) and performs his duty.
Question #1. Does Buck #1 immediately go in search of another mate?
Question #2. Does Doe #1 indicate to other Bucks by action and or odor that she is not available?
Question #3. Suppose Buck #2 happens along and finds Doe #1. Does he enter into a "piggy-back" encounter with her? I have read of a doe giving birth to twins, each of which had been sired from different bucks.
Question #4. Suppose Buck #1 finds Doe #2 being pursued by Buck #4 (junior in age, size, and dominance to Buck #1). I assume Buck #1 and #4 have a "talk" and takes over the task.
Question #5. Buck #1, after breeding Doe #1 and Doe #2, continues on patrol and after several encounters with various Does, stumbles upon Doe #1 again. Let us assume that this took a day or two. Does he re-breed with Doe #1? What tells him that her "dance card" has already been punched.
Question #6. Does Buck #1 keep a harem (similar to elk) and drive away other prospective mates.
I do not speak "Buck-ese" and can not verbally converse with him, but certainly would like to be able to do that. I'm hoping that some biologist, or other person in the know, might be able to shed some light on this.
The reason I ask is to our method of herd management. We own 300+ acres, low fenced, adjoining 2000+ acres of COE land. Therefore, we know there is critter travel between properties. By means of trail cameras we KNOW of 17 bucks and many more does call our 300 acres "home". We KNOW of 3 major, kick-ass brutes that have appeared on several photos. One is a 9 pointer (nicknamed Walter), a 10 pointer (nicknamed Goliath), and a 12 pointer which we have named King Tut. These 3 have been placed on a "NO SHOOT" list, we only shoot 6 and 8 pointers, but are we shooting ourselves in the foot by taking out the semi-dominant. We try to keep the doe situation under control, but do NOT know the exact number of critters the land holds. We assume it to be about 50, so we cull between 5 and 10 every year.
Maybe we should contact the New York DEC and have one of their educated wizards survey the land and tell us how many it will support and what his recommendation would be for culling bucks.
Any comments and/or suggestions ??????