Our local biologist flies by helicopter for about a week in early January, before horns drop. He counts bucks, does, and fawns. Our western MT counts have typically run about 20:100:65 for the last couple years, I check each year, haven't called him yet this year.

On male:female ratios in deer, our local elk herd has run a 38:62 ratio of bull calves to cow calves for over a decade now. This situation is not at all unusual. The best scientific sourcebook I've seen is a book put out by the Wildlife Institute, called Whitetails something or other. I got it through interlibrary loan at my local library. This book weighs about 25 lbs. and has accessible-to-the-layman science on almost every aspect of whitetail ecology, biology, anatomy, etc. you could wish to see. On fawn buck:doe ratios, it makes it clear that disparities of 2 to 1 in the ratios do occur rather commonly. It seems that the general principle involved is that expanding herds produce more doe fawns, and overpopulated herds produce more bucks. The exact nuts and bolts of why this is so are still being worked out. Anyhow, with the new craze for QDM, one factor one might deal with is that as you whack does and drop herd density, while at the same time improving your habitat with crops planted for the deer, you may actually trigger your local deer to produce fawn ratios skewed heavily toward does. That last sentence is still theoretical, mind you, but I'll bet we'll start seeing some new science on that in the next decade.