At what age do you shoot spikes?

[dennishoddy]

The whole idea of "culling" to "improve the herd" makes me laugh. I would rather take a 60lb doe over a monster anyday of the week, simply better eating in my opinion and thats the reason I hunt. If all i was concerned about was horns I'd hunt a high fenced game preserve or the zoo which is about the same thing in my book. Im no expert but if I was a guessing person the only way to see more mature bucks is to let every single buck walk for say 4-5yrs and harvest nothing but females.
If we really wanted to get innovative, how about reducing limits to 1buck a year reguardless of season, or eliminate buck harvest for say three years while at the same time increase the limits on females.

The wildlife dept almost saw a mutiny when they cut it to two bucks per year.
I've hunted a DMAP for the 7th year now, and from what the biologist have told us is that we need to take the mature does from the herd.
The following statment is not sealed in stone, so keep that in mind.
The Biologist has told us that a yearling doe that gets bred, will "typically" produce a single fawn, with the majority of the fawns being buck fawns.
The mature does, will produce twin fawns, "typically" both being doe fawns.
So, in the interest of getting more bucks, try to take the mature does.
We have done that on the DMAP. We continue to see more and more bucks every year.
The side benefit of this is that when the does run the young bucks off, they go to neighboring lands, so this process has benefits for the general herd in our area, not just the DMAP land.

 

[AllOut]

I think people will toss a fit if we go to a 1 buck limit as well but i would still like to see it happen. It would only suck for a few years but people would only ***** til they saw and got to reap the benefits of having a lot more bigger mature bucks running around come november. I have said it numerous times, lower buck limit and get rifle season away from the rut and we will see a drastic change in our buck quality. Of course we still need to lower doe numbers so i kind of like the earn a buck idea by having to kill a doe first.... but now we are getting away from QDM and more into TDM.

 

[MoBoost]

The Biologist has told us that a yearling doe that gets bred, will "typically" produce a single fawn, with the majority of the fawns being buck fawns.
The mature does, will produce twin fawns, "typically" both being doe fawns.

I've seen studies just like that, and it's simply amazing that some biologists think that white tail deer is a reptile.

In most mammals sex is determined by XX/XY chromosome - father determines sex of the offspring (females simply don't have Y).

 

[dennishoddy]

I've seen studies just like that, and it's simply amazing that some biologists think that white tail deer is a reptile.

In most mammals sex is determined by XX/XY chromosome - father determines sex of the offspring (females simply don't have Y).

Well, I don't know how to reply to this.
But I will say that we have more small bucks, some button bucks, and small forks etc. Something has to be working?

I'll have to do some research about the "reptile" tendancies of white tail deer during the breeding cycle.

 

[handlebar]

Stop shooting spikes when you run out of spikes. Killem all