Well i hunt on about 2,000 acres of private land. I share it with 2 other bow hunters that im good friends with. Out of 2000 acres only about 400 acres are wooded, with the rest being corn/bean fields, with some swampy stuff mixed in. My question is if we take 3 bucks off our property how many does should be taken as well. I was thinking i would shoot 2. any thoughts??

It all depends on your buck to doe ratio. Most places there are alot more does than bucks, and your gonna see more does because they are generaly more active than bucks during daylight. The best way is to try and get as acurate of a estimate asyou can from sightingsof number of bucks compaired to number of does. The ideal ratio would be one buck to no more than two does. I hunt a 775 acre farm and from the best I could tell last year the ratio was somewhere around 1 buck to 6 or 7 does. So myself and the other guys who hunt the farm went on doe patrol and ended up taking somthing like 20 does and 5 bucks. I was doing a little summer scouting last weekend and Ill tell you this, we didnt even put a dent in them.

In most areas it would do no harm to shoot every one that walked within range. And yes I am serious! Ther aren't many areas in the US that don't have too many does.

i would shoot an equal number of does to bucks if not more . Most are out of balance with to many does






[/align]

In PA we have over 850000 hunters, I hope some of them use a little more logic than to shoot every one they could. Great thinking..[:'(]

Since this is a bowhunting forum. I assume he was asking a bowhunting ?, I stand by my original answer.

And on top of that, the herd is estimated at 1.6 MILLION deer....You could take out 850,000 deer and that would still only be half the herd......Even though it is unrealistic to think that EVERYONE that hunts the state will kill at least 1 deer.....PA averaged a little over 475,000 deer killed annually for the last 5 years.....That's a bunch of deer, and the pop. is still over 1.5 MILLION?? Good grief that's a lot of deer......

Yeah, I don't think whackin some does is gonna hurt much....

We always try to tag atleast 3 or 4 Does for every buck taken.

This is GREAT information right here, guys. This is what I'm up against. When talking to my wildlife bio......he told me we could shoot EIGHTEEN and probably not notice a discernable difference. I may be whackin does for a few years.

This.....and I'm only hunting deer that are ranging over about 1 square mile+. Keep a good log (re: Sightings per hunt...and the ratio)....contact your wildlife biologist.....and let him tell you what you need to harvest.

Then....you just have to be disciplined enough to stick to the plan. I hope I am. He also told me, though.....that taking a buck wasn't a bad thing. My suggestion was to not take one, this year. HE told ME to go ahead. It's another mouth eating, to him.....and theres another buck (fawn) to replace him in the dynamic. Maybe I will....maybe I won't.

GREAT thread!

The WisconsinDNR wants everyone in the state to harvest at least 2.4 deer this year, and at least 1 antlerless deer. They say we will be glad we did come the 2008 season. They have somethign up their sleeves that they are not telling us.