Down here we use alot of different methods in order to find out the sex ratio.

During the "off" months, we drive around the ranch doing a spot light survey. This involves 3 people, one is driving & recording the game spotted, the other 2 are each sitting back to back in the bed of the truck shining the spotlight looking and telling the driver to stop once they see an animal.

Another method that we use is trail cameras, but these tend to only take pictures of the same deer that visit the area.

The best method that we do, is a helicopter survey. We fly over the ranch a couple of times each year and take pictures of all the nice bucks we see, and count all the deer that we see. All bucks that we see are recorded and broken down into age classes. All does that we see are counted and so are the fawns. But in years that we get alot of rain, like in 2003 and 2004 so far, the brush gets very thick so it can be hard to see alot of the deer. Alot of the deer will also lay down when they hear the helicopter over head, and will refuse to run. Some times we will have to go into the brush with the helicopter above us, and force the deer to get up.

There is no such thing as a 100% correct way of finding the sex ratio. If you come within 10% of the actual number of deer, then go ahead and pat yourself on the back because you did one hell of a good job.

Every day that you are hunting, you should see a pretty even number of does and bucks. IF you see 10 does and not a single buck, then you know that your population is some what out of whack. But each day your in the woods make sure you count all the deer that you see, and break them down into different catagories, this will help you find the buck:doe ratio in the area that you hunt.