J Pike

boltman, I read the same article in D&D mag. many deer mangers are changing their opinions of having a buck to doe ratio of under 1: 1.5, I also agree that a ratio of 3 bucks to 1 doe in a free ranging herd is impossible. On our 1,250 acres we are shooting for a 1:1 ratio and we are currently under a 1:1.5 buck to doe ratio and I dont see any need to be much lower than that. What we need to do is get & keep our herd under control, which is going to be a huge problem in the future unless the ODNR. gives us extra doe tag's. Currently we have about 50 DPSM. on our property, 24 of which are 2.5 year old bucks or older (And I think having a good populaton of older bucks is far more important than a perfect buck to doe ratio) The problem I see is that next year will be our 3rd year of passing up every 1.5 year old buck and we only harvested 9 shooter bucks so far during the last 2 years, 2 bucks in 2002, and 7 bucks in 2003 so far, and the only way to be able to harvest more deer will be to bring in more hunters, which is something we do not want to do but if we dont, dispersal is going to start to be a real problem in the future,maybe we will just bring in a few gun hunters. Pike