hey guys, just your favorite anti-qdmer here. now, i don' t claim to be an expert, but i have been doing my homework about qdm, because the issue has been coming up lately here in vt, so i have been getting tons of info, for and against qdm, from many leading biologist' s around the country, so this is where i am pulling in the numbers and facts from.. first off, if you wish to have qdm, PRIVATELY, well hey, so be it, go for it, and this is what it sounds like dan wants. now having said this, according to what i have in front of me, dan, out of the 50ish deer that you have seen, assuming that your doe reproductive rate is 1 adult doe carrying twin fawns, you have actually seen: 2 adult bucks, 16 ADULT doe, 16 button bucks, and 16 fawn does, if my math came out right. that isn' t how we think of deer as hunters when we see flags going off in the woods, but i believe i am pretty close, so you actually have a lot more bucks around then you may think, but don' t ask me where they go to on you during hunting season. perhaps there is a lot more poaching and winter kill going on around you than people know. now also, i have reports from at least a dozen state biologists, including some involved in the qdm and qdma effort, and they all pretty much agree, having a ratio of 2 ADULT doe to 1 ADULT buck would be much more desirable from a management stand point. as for whether or not a herd can exceed a 4-1 ratio, according to charles ruth, south carolina deer project supervisor, and also according to w. matt knox, deer program supervisor from
virginia, it can never mathematically happen. word for word, from mr. knox " .. if you average a fawn per yearling and adult doe recruitment into a deer herd and kill every antlered male in the population, then the adult sex ratio can never get worse than 2:3:1. trust me, i have checked the math and logic. the reason for this is that in these populations, reproduction is fairly high anda large segment of the population (30-40%) in any given year is fawns. these fawns have an approximate 50-50sex ratio (or potentiallymore males, 50-55%), so the large number of buck fawns constatnly " rebalance" the sex ratio. as long as this " in-flow" of buck fawns is maintained sex ratios stay fairly balanced. THE ONLY WAY SEX RATIOS CAN BECOME SEVERELY IMBALANCED IS IF REPRODUCTION/RECRUITMENT IS LOW AND BUCK MORTALITY IS HIGH" end quote. now, according to mike tonkovich, wildlife research biologist from ohio, he and others in the field say to do what you and others have already mentioned, if you want to improve your ADULT sex ratio, you just have to lower the harvest rate on bucks and increase the does. i know your situation regarding limited doe harvest, we here in vt have to apply for a limited draw for a doe also. so anyway, i guess what i am trying to say is try to find out what is happening to all your buck fawns, for statrers, limit you buck kill as much as you can, and try to shoot a few more does, that is how you will get what you are trying to achieve, imho.

oopps, sorry, forgot two things, make sure that the does harvested are adult does, and also, russ, i think it was you, dan sais on the first page that there is a small herd availabe to work with.

Boy Dan, I don' t know. 15 feet of snow?

As others have said, shooting does may not be the answer in your particular situation. 99% of the time, doe harvest is a major management issue, but you are in a unique situation up there. You could actually do more damage than good depending on the condition of the deeryards and severity of the winter.

It sounds like you have a comparable situation to some areas in the UP. " High-snowfall" is considered to be anything greater than ~ 13 feet there. Because of the severe winters (lake-effect snows) and depleted winter range in some areas, increasing doe harvest is not recommended in those particular areas. Increasing the harvest of anlerless deer would not reduce browsing pressure enough to allow winter habitat (deer yards) to recover and improve the overall health of the herd. What is confusing about your situation is that areas of high natural mortality and light hunting pressure (like the UP) normally have more balanced buck:doe ratios to begin with. ???

Again, it is very difficult to understand what kind of a situation you are dealing with up there. Are the deer using your land for yarding? Can you improve the wintering habitat on your land through forestry techniques? Is there a local biologist you can talk to that would understand what you want to do?


S.Texas - By SCC, do you mean optimum sustained yield (OSY - 60% to 70% of K)?

vt; I said about 25 deer per sq. mile if that' s whay you mean by a small herd or do you mean the 5-6 deer that inhabit my property as their home range? If you start off with a 3:1 doe to buck ratio in a population of 10,000, you have 7500 does and 2500 bucks to start. There are say 1000 antlerless tags and unlimited buck tags issued. If the harvest is 20% of the deer (1000 antlerless & 1000 bucks), at the end of the hunting season would be 7000 does and 1000 bucks (7:1) remaining. Half of the antlerless deer harvested are young bucks. After birthing that would increase to 10500 does and 4500 bucks. The high ratio (approx.) is returned. If you see the way the buck population fluctuates you can see why I only see antlerless deer or button bucks. The older ones are like ghosts just to stay alive. The next season there would be a larger deer population so more bucks would be harvested.

This does bring up the fact that young (antlerless) bucks are easy to get incorporated in the doe count.

Dan O.

dan, i am certainly not trying to start an arguement, and i hope no one is taking it that way, just so you know, lol. however, i when i said that you said you had a small heard, i was just going off from a previous post that you had made, and in it, you didn' t state, when you were talking herd numbers, if you meant those on your property, or the surrounding area. also, on your 10,000 example, you have to remember, when you and i talk numbers, we are talking about bucks and all other deer combined, which is where your 7500 is coming from. biologists, however, would take that 7500, and dissect it into adult doe, button bucks, and fawn doe., and if your ADULT doe population only has on average one fawn per ADULT doe, that means you actually have an addition 2500 immature bucks running around(button bucks). if you shot 1000 anterless deer, with half being button bucks, that will still leave a total of 2000 button bucks around. so now you have 4500 fawn doe and adult doe kicking around still( 5000 minus the 500 shot during anterless season). take that 5000, just for kicks we will say every ADULT doe got bred, which is only 2500, multiply that by 2, you now have 5000 come spring in this group. out of that 5000, roughly 1500 are bucks! now, adding all of the bucks that were button bucks the year before, together with the older deer from before, you have still got 3500 adult bucks, 1500 button bucks, 5000 ADULT doe, and 1500 fawn doe. so what does that give you for a ratio, roughly 1 ADULT buck for every 1.4 ADULT doe. by the way, i really, really stink at math, so don' t be suprised if i am off, because i won' t be, lol. god, i hope a math teacher doesn' t read this, i would hate to get sent to the corner, lol. and you are right, those small bucks do get counted into the doe count when their heads look like mine! how is their winter browse doing, any chance of planting more cedar on your place, to help keep them around? i know our yards with cedar can really get hammered on when there is too high a population.

OSY is simply harvesting the optimum of a population so that it does not affect population quality. This is what we all strive for.

SCC is symply levels that are acceptable to people. these are usually lower than bcc.

is that clear as mud

yall have agood evening - been a long day.


PS I like this place - wish I could have found it sooner.

VT; don' t ever worry about giving your opinion. We' re all here to learn from each other. Planting an acre or 2 of cedars wouldn' t do anything in my area. The wintering area is dense cedars about 5 miles wide by 10 miles long.

So I believe that what you' re saying is that I don' t have a shortage of bucks, I just have a shortage of bucks with antlers. That brings us back to the original question of - how do I increase the " mature" buck population? I added " mature" because a buck or a doe with no antlers eats up the hard to get tag.

The answer appears to be the same as before.

Dan O.

dan, just an oddball question for you, you said that you have a huge cedar area close by, is it huntable, because i know down here, that is one of the first places that our deer head when the pressure is on. how many people hunt your property specifacally? and now the odd question, if you want to plant food, why not do it in a way to give yourself a side income, such as by planting a small orchard of say, apples, and if your laws are anything like ours, one bonus is that you can get a tax break for seven years, i believe, because it will take the trees at least that long before they start to produce anything. but, at the same time, you will be attracting deer, because of the trees, and if they start to cause damage, if you have them available, get damage permits for what they are doing to the trees, culling out the mature does as needed(or as many as they gov. lets' s you). when mature, the trees will also help attract deer, your qdm plan will take 3-5 years to show any kind of real results, which we can count as tree growing time, and you should have results starting to appear like you are aiming for. plus, you can get some good eating, apple flavored deer meat, lol. and don' t forget about selling any excess apples, the whole point of planting that particular crop in the first place. i suppose planting down vegetables would do the same, the trick in either case is to plant at least the minimum amount needed to qualify for any kind of destruction program, but not more than you wish to handle. heck, sell the apples/vegetables to the farmer up the road for feed, and also to the outdoor center across the road, i am sure that they would take fresh veggies for their guests.

from VT
This would be so optimal - but remember you must also equate immigration, emigration, death rate, actual birth rate, predation, birth survival rates etc...

BCC limits exponential growth.

just a thought for you lunchbucket, i just e-mailed dr. david gyunn, from clemson university, who also is on the board of directors of QDMA, and he agreed, that unless you are able to draw a lot of deer onto 100 acres, and have a large adjacent area next to that property that is unhunted, you won' t get any results from an attempted qdm plan on such a small parsel..