RE: Proper buck to doe ratio?
 

I actually hunt just north of you Kegei, in zone 284 around Itasca State Park. Last year you couldn' t buy intensive harvest there, just management tags. It funny how it goes from that to 4 over the counter tags in one year. I also hunt the Detroit Lakes area for the muzzleloader on some farm land there. I agree with you though about the earn a buck program. Seems like ratio is out of wack here and I think that would help some. Of course maybe the DNR should take a look at expanding the firearms season for more than 9 days...that would definitely help people fill their tags. I never did understand that.

RE: Proper buck to doe ratio?
 

Here in Maryland the doe to buck ratio is about 450 to one. :D
All kidding aside, I wouldn' t doubt if it was at least 15 or 20 to one...

RE: Proper buck to doe ratio?
 

my state is pretty bad...took me 4 years to get my first buck....seen about 50 deer or so while hunting them and none that i know were bucks...i did see 1 but he was running and me or dad couldnt shoot becuase we would killed some guy in a treestand in the line of fire...safe thinkin on our part...but i finally got my first buck last year.....now our state has antler restrictions and we are doing alot of doe reduction trying to fix it....this is the second year for ARs..about 5th for herd reductions...it started slow but now we are taking alot more does...i hope it works...shooting does is fun and we pack the freezer but a nice set of antlers is nice...PAs buck to doe is probally around 15-20 doe to 1 buck id guess....who knows for sure....it would be nice to see a study done and give all the cry babys a few facts on why we need these changes they cry about....maybe it was done and i missed it....who knows perfect..i think 2 does to a buck would be good....5 doe to a buck would be more realistic and still be pretty good....

RE: Proper buck to doe ratio?
 

It' s important when talking about antlerless/antlered ratios to realize that within the antlerless segment you are grouping antlerless bucks (button bucks). If your herd birthrate and fawn survival are close to the average 1.6 per mature doe and .5 per fawn doe (now a yearling doe), when you see 10 antlerless deer, there are, on average, 3 button bucks in the group. Combining these with the one antlered buck you see, gives a doe/buck (female/male) ratio of 7/4 or 1.75/1. The ratio is 2.6/1 if just 2 of the 10 antlerless are button bucks. Those are not bad ratios. There are not many true sex ratio problems, rather a very common lack of age in the male segment of the herd.

One drawback to concentrating the effort on does is the inevitable killing of antlerless bucks. In your 10 antlerless example, every third (definitely 4th) deer killed will be a button buck if randomly taken. As individuals, we can avoid this by looking at the nose length of the animal, clearly longer relative to other head measurments on 2 1/2 and older does, pretty obvious on yearling (1 1/2) does also. Just don' t expect great results if the general public is steered in that direction. It would help, simply by reducing overall deer numbers, providing better nutrition to the survivors and more importantly, satiating the average joe' s desire to shoot a deer, before a yearling antlered buck walks by. Most joe' s would wind up shooting the doe as required and hang it up for the season, cause 1 deer is all they can use. DNR wouldn' t like the requirement cause some number of hunters would stop hunting if a doe were required before a buck. In Maryland, we can take either antlered or antlerless as a first deer, but you have to take 2 antlereless before taking a second antlered deer. A good compromise. Good luck with your herd dynamics.