Can farmers and deer co-exist?

A case of too many adult does and doe fawns can be the downfall of a deer herd.

Many farmers I know have a love-hate relationship with deer on their land. As long as whitetail numbers aren't too high, they seem to coexist without undue problems.

It's when antlerless deer numbers grow way out of proportion to their local available habitat and their food supply that things get real testy. Two decades ago, the deer numbers were at an all-time high.

The DNR estimated the state deer herd at two million, and many people thought it was much higher. Deer, in such numbers, are a major problem. A farmer I know planted 80 acres to corn, and on Oct. 2, he began cutting his corn. He told me that he should get nearly three full gravity boxes of corn from that field.

Deer require management, and that means hunters must shoot some does.

Instead, he got about half of one gravity box. The deer and raccoons ate the rest. That was the year he applied for crop damage permits. The first year he and his friends took about 50 antlerless deer, and the same thing happened the next year, and guess what?

Hunters saw far fewer deer the third year but they saw more bucks. And they weren't a bunch of puny basket-rack bucks. Some were 8-pointers with wide and high racks. The hunting for good bucks continued until the doe numbers built up again, and the number and quality of bucks crashed again.

The need for herd management, whether on private and state land, is necessary. Game biologists could toss their computers, forget about computer models, lay down boot leather, and that would tell them what they need to know.

Any given area can support only so many deer. Once the deer numbers exceed the carrying capacity of the land, the quality of bucks goes down in direct proportion to the amount of crop damage done by hungry deer.

And, like it or not, hunters and landowners must become better stewards of this natural resource. Too many does throws the whole breeding process out of kilter. A few of the largest bucks do the breeding, but when the largest bucks are only 1 1/2 or 2 1/2 years old, the herd is way out of balance and in trouble.

Young bucks should be protected and given time to grow big antlers & body.

That is when more does must be removed, and more bucks must be spared. Everything wrong with herd management in many areas can be laid at the feet of the hunter. All of them want to shoot a buck.

It stands to reason that all of them cannot shoot a buck. Some hunters must forego shooting bucka, and concentrate on shooting some does.

If we started with one buck and one doe, and they successful bred and weren't shot, there would be the original buck and doe plus a doe fawn and button-buck the next spring. The following year, if the doe fawn gets bred and the original doe gets bred, there will four more fawns born. If a buck is removed, it begins to weight the scales more in favor of antlerless deer. The following year, if two or more bucks are shot but no does, the herd gets farther and farther out of balance.

The only way that most farmers and most deer can get along is if the whitetail herd never gets out of balance. The ideal buck-doe ratio is one to one, but it's nearly impossible to obtain. One-and-a-half does per buck is often considered ideal, but 10 years ago the buck-to-doe ratio was one buck per 30 or 40 or more does. It's easy if one does the math, and reduces the buck numbers every year, to see how a herd will get so far out of whack that it's difficult to straighten things out.

An out-of-balance deer herd has far too many does.

From all accounts, considering the weather, a lower number of bucks were killed around the state last year. Had the weather been more conducive to hunting, the buck kill may have been higher.

The key thing for hunters to realize is that does must be taken every year. And taking more does than bucks will bring the herd back into a better balance, and if young bucks were allowed to live for two or three years, there would be more and larger bucks.

Balancing the deer herd, and allowing bucks to grow for three years before being taken, would make Michigan a big-buck state. It's all up to the hunters, and it's something they should think about.

Title: Can farmers and deer co-exist?

Tags: ((Dave, Richey, Michigan, outdoors, reduce, doe, number, protect, young, bucks, three, years, 8-oiubr, minimum))

Posted via email from Dave Richey Outdoors