So what do they do with the bucks meat? Donate it or just snatch the head and trash the rest?

YES FOLKS.......of course we eat the bucks.

I have some jalapeno and cheese summer sausage being made that's actually making me drool right now thinking about it.

I know I mentioned taking a doe for meat....I guess that's just the way I've always worded it.

My hunting lease isn't the only place I'm seeing this "more buck/less doe" thing happening.

My folks live about 5 miles away from our hunting lease. They have apx. 9 acres and the back of it is bordered by a 100+ acre tract of land that nobody lives on. It's covered in white oak accorn trees.
I have a feeder set up at the back of their land and a game camera watching it.
I have this group of 3 does that come in almost every night to feed. 2 adult does and 1 yearling.
I currently have SEVEN DIFFERENT bucks on camera. Everything from yearling 4 pointers up to a REALLY nice 11 point.

These deer are kinda' my Mom's "pets"....so I don't hunt them. But, it's still strange to see such a reverse from what's usually considered the "norm".

I'm GUESSING the does are in the area and I'm just not seeing them.....but we are talking about 8 years of hunting on this lease and THOUSANDS of trail camera photos....we're still not SEEING the does.

You folks think the does are just doing that great of a job of hiding from me or can buck/doe ratios really get that out of whack?

And no....I'm not complaining. It's great to see that many different bucks each year. Just seems kinda' weird to not be seeing lots of does as well.

I wish i had your "problem".

sounds like you have a good problem, i hunt in middle state SC, i but my buck to doe ratio is 10 does to 2 bucks lol.

Some donate, yes, to their other family members. No one I know tolerates snatching the head and trashing the rest. There's wanton waste laws here and it's illegal, not to mention the whole integrity/ethics issue that goes with that.

It's like ordering a cheeseburger and you only get a hamburger. It's not what you want, but you still eat it. LOL!

iSnipe

Same here iSnipe. Meat is meat regardless of if it came from a buck or a doe. The party I hunt with doesn't end the hunt in the field. Everyone comes to my house and we make sausage out of all the venison and I spend days afterwards smoking it in my smokehouse. It's a ton of fun spending the day making sausage, drinking beer and laughing about the funny stuff that happens at deer camp! I recommend it to anyone that hunts.

That's good to know. I can't tell you how outraged and disappointed I was the first time I saw a buck carcass in the woods with only its head removed. Kinda made me sick that someone would actually do that and then probably refer to it as hunting to their friends.

I can relate to your reversed sex ratio. We own a small farm here in west-central Illinois and over the last 7 years we've hunted it... we've consistently seen more Bucks than Does.

What state do you hunt in? Perhaps you could get more help from other hunters in that state if you solicited their experiences as well.

Have you checked the ratio with your state and/or county? Maybe the ratio you're seeing is exactly the ratio they want. I think I've read that 1:1 or 2:1 is ideal. Check with your state's DEC, DNR, PGC..... or whatever your state calls the people that regulate hunting activity.

Again, it's hard to help without knowing where you're hunting.

Around here the DNR, ie, Department of Natural Resources, do studies that monitors deer. They do deer density studies and sex ratio. I'm sure they must do others, but am not familiar of what.

I once knew of this map a guy got from a DNR surveyor of an area that had an unbalanced herd. Now I don't recall the specific ratios, but it was something like 3:1 bucks over does. That's for every one doe in that area, there were 3 bucks.

It was a smaller secluded area bordered by swamps on all 4 sides. It was harvested for trees a few years before the study. The loggers did their job in the winter where they can get their equipment over there on the ice. The area, by my memory, was only a few hundred acres.

While at the time no one speculated as to why there were so many bucks in that area over does, I suspected it was because they were secluded. I set stands there one day and had to cross using waders. It was slow going and took some work, but I did see scrapes and rubs there. Unfortunately the work that it took to get there only allowed my lazy self at the time to hunt only once. LOL!

iSnipe