HuntingNet.com Forums - quality deer management?

In response, let me reiterate that I'm not trying to be argumentative. That said, you can sit down with a pen and paper and do age structure charts just for fun. I do it during the winter when I'm bored. Without going into too many details, it's actually not that difficult to have a 40:100 ratio in a "natural" population. (The range I gave ,4 to 8 per 10, was meant to cover the ranges I have seen in various ungulate studies.) Given the 38:62 ratio I gave for elk, you can get an adult ratio of 40:100 with 30% mortality in females and 50% mortality in males. Granted 40:100 is on the extreme end, but you'll see it in the science. Conversely, off the top of my head I can remember no studies citing 1:1 ratios in natural unhunted populations.

My main point is that we humans have a very mixed record at "improving" on nature's design. Nature must have had a reason for "setting" sex ratios the way they are (i.e. something less than 1:1). I personally know one of those people down in Texas who have there deer fenced in, and they aim for 2:1 ratios, and it really bothers me on multiple levels - the fences and the tampering with nature. If you say 1:1, the next guy's apt to think something like, "If 1:1 is good, then 1.5:1 would be better", and so on. To close this, it's not hard to imagine that as you get to the 1:1 point and beyond, you make a herd that might be more vulnerable to sudden disruptions (i.e. less able to recover from tough winters or disease outbreaks or whatever).