Just wondering what I should do!

[shot'm&hook'm]

Last year I saw more deer than I have ever seen in a hunting season. 1 button buck, 2 4pt.'s, 1 8 pt. and 15-20 does. The thing is I don't know what I should do this coming season! Should I just kill does, should I take out the one good buck if I see it? Also on a neigboring farm their were alot of broken racks spotted with only one good deer taken a 9 pt. I think the broken racks are due to poor nutrition. Their are no food plots on the 600+ acres that I and the neigboring farm hunt. I have one small mineral lick and it gets devoured quicker than I can supply. I plan on making 3 plots this spring that will total to about 1 acre that will be on my 86 acres. What else should I do?

[predator]

Wasn't your area hit pretty hard by EHD? If so I'd watch taking too many does, but the herd will bounce back quickly if allowed to do so. I think your broken racks are the result of bucks fighting instead of poor nutrition, you may have a better buck to doe ratio than you think. Your new food plots should help the overall health of the herd, a good clover mix, IMO would be best to plant. If you see a good buck, take him if thats what you want. Good luck.

[tex]

Old man once told me to take every doe seen. And when you start to get worried, keep shooting them. When you don't see any more, stop shooting them. Then wait a little bit, and see what happens. He was serious, and had a biologist consulting on the ranch. Within months, enough does showed back up and there were plenty of does. However, his bucks fought alot, and by the time gun season came, most had broken racks.

Now I don't necessarily agree, but I don't know either. This property was in the Hill Country in Texas, and it's density is much higher in whitetail numbers. They were of the opinion that too many does ate the preferred food for deer. So with a greatly reduced population, the preferred foods of deer actually had a chance to grow. This was before food plots, by the way.

He ended up allowing only 1 buck to be taken, (it was a 2 buck region) and you had to shoot a doe first. Each extra doe, within reason, gave you a $50 reduction in the next year's lease price. The cost was about 1100 for a week of gun season, 1 buck with 3 does was the usual kill, but he never could get ahead of the curve due to does filtering in from surrounding ranches to fill the vaccuum.

Like I say, I don't know, either way, just thought I would let ya know what the old guy said, and he seemed to be an upfront, kind of guy.

[shot'm&hook'm]

well I see an unreal nuber of does and so do my neighbors but we rarely see a buck. EHD did hit pretty hard but mainly our older deer. Most deer I see now look to be 2 1/2 or younger. After gun season I never saw another buck. so I would say I need to thin them out! as far as the antlers go it probably is fighting contributing to it but anly 3 out of the 6 to 8 bucks seen on the two farms carried a full rack so I think nutrition has some thing to do with it. We had very few acorns. and until last year about the last of October we had no food plots or mineral licks.