Deer populations

[Wes/Tex]

It's easy for them, and you can watch it happen. Starting about a week before, every yahoo in the world moves into the bush to "scout." The sudden increase in human activity is easy for them to read. They know what's next.

Yep...think you got it. Sudden increase in the quadracaps running through the woods is like hunting the woods with a military band! Too bad they don't have a shorter version of this. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7wEUlpaYjY

 

[Loyalist Dave]

We are up to our armpits in deer here in Maryland.

LD

 

[larry wv]

Bow season came in here in wv Sept 27th. I own 3 farms with my brother so have plenty of room to hunt. Since we bale and sell hay I have plenty of morning and evening time to hunt, I go 2 hours in the morn and 2 hours in the eve till rut then more. I have hunted twice a day every day except Sunday since the 27th. I have seen a mommy Doe and 1 baby and another mommy with 2 babies prob 4 or 5 times. I have not seen a Buck in the month of Sept or Oct. The Coyotes have killed everything except the Squirrels and a few ground buzzards(Turkeys). Its prob legal to kill a Doe with a firearm close to 30 days a year. I'm not going to figure it up. Anyway in the area here the Deer are going extinct. The northern tip of mason county in western wv

Larry

 

[Grumpa]

Here around Pittsburgh PA, in Allegheny county, there is no limit to the number of Antlerless tags you can buy. The problem is, finding a place to hunt. Every year, more development. The big bucks - and we have the biggest in the state, know where hunting is non-existent. My daughter, here in Mt. Lebanon (a suburb of Pgh), regularly has 4 buck ( 10, 2 eights, and an enormous spike - one horn, like an eland!) that sit within 20 feet of her house. No hunting.

I use to have 16 antlerless in 2 groups that rotated in my backyard. And I saw the biggest buck I've ever seen alive, in my backyard.

Township brought Dept. of Agriculture snipers in with silenced ARs, night vision scopes, lots of corn and apples, and a truck with a shooting tower. They set up down the street from me at night (in the Main Park, between the picnic tables and the kid's play equipment) and slaughtered about 100 deer. I have no problem with that - if you don't shoot them, CWD will rear its ugly head.

BTW, in my experience, many, if not most of the antlerless deer shot, are button bucks. Here in the West, we have to count points (3 on one beam, not counting a brow tine - try doing that when your deer is moving through the brush/trees), and comply with a staggered application setup to get licenses (other than in Special Reg areas like Allegheny cty).

All this is supposed to make for bigger bucks, but I've been hunting 60 years, and I don't see
it, not out where you can hunt.

Enough ranting.

 

[crockett]

I asked the same thing of some guys in Florida- they feed them to their deer hounds- the dogs literally working for their supper.
I just finished a 3 day muzzle loader on public land- 41 guys and 1 buck. Getting pretty slow.

 

[Spikebuck]

It varies in Minnesota, but the general trend has been down...by DNR design. Numbers were very, very high a decade ago. They spent the last 10 years issuing tons of tags and they probably went a few years too long like that. Northern Minnesota has had two very hard winters on top of that and their herd, also affected by too many wolves, is in trouble (except right around Duluth, I hear). They are on a Buck-only restriction this year. Most areas of the state are one-deer only. Just a few allow from 2 to 5. Around the Twin-Cities metro, it's still basically unlimited. In my area of the South, we are down, but still with pretty healthy numbers especially in the very SE which is almost all a private, restricted QDM type area. You can not shoot more than one buck in a year...if there is a quota higher than that, it has to be does.

 

[Jaeger]

I would describe Michigan as flush with deer. Perhaps populations are a bit thinner the further north you go...not sure. But in southern Michigan, especially where there is farmland, we are loaded. And they are very common now in the suburbs of Detroit in places where deer were never seen in the 1950's to 1980's, which I find very strange.

 

[jackpine54]

Last night I sat in my tree stand and watched 26 deer browse their way across my clover field on the way to eat in my field corn. One spike buck and the rest baldies. I'd say there must be a few decent bucks around to have that many does, but you don't see many. :idunno:
The problem we have is no antler point restriction on bucks in our county means if it has anything on it's head it's probably not going to see the next year.
The past few winters we've also had severe cold and 150"+ of snow so the dnr has cut doe tags way back as well.
So plenty of deer, but not many big bucks.

 

[Coot]

I live about 25 miles west of Richmond - a mix of farms, woods & subdivisions with 2-15 acre lots. A mix of hunters & bambi lovers so you can hunt on one property but not the one next to it. Nothing unusual to have a dozen in the front pasture when coming home after dark. We always see dead deer on the roadside.

 

[morb]

The Coyotes have killed everything except the Squirrels and a few ground buzzards(Turkeys). Its prob legal to kill a Doe with a firearm close to 30 days a year. I'm not going to figure it up. Anyway in the area here the Deer are going extinct. The northern tip of mason county in western wv
Larry

I'm afraid if we have another winter like the last 2 we are going to be in the same position you are in.
The coyote population is very healthy here as well. There was a Provence wide bounty on coyotes here a few years ago, if I remeber correctly there was 70,000 coyotes harvested that year and what diffence it made on the deer population in the couple years after that.
Now with the hard winters the deer had the last 2 years the coyotes have been eating pretty good and their numbers up again.

 

[robinsroost]

I think that I am fortunate to live where I do. The limit, in my county, is three bucks per season, per person, and three does per day. I usually only take one deer per year. I live on a small farm, 27 acres, with one pasture and the rest is mixed pine and hardwood, with a few persimmon and cherry trees. My property is surrounded by agriculture and my woods is full of deer, wild turkeys and squirrels. Keep yer powder dry.........Robin :wink: