![]() I think the states that have extended gun season will send old mature deer to being primarily nocturnal even if that pressure is kept off of our own farms. As long as we have enough food to hold the deer to keep them from traveling too much from our farm we can somewhat control what gets killed and how they are being hunted. In my part of the world the nutrition is already in play so it is just a matter of low pressure and not having the neighbors kill them all off so that we have them. ![]() #1 is having them to kill in the first place. In my opinion low pressure is the #2 key to killing big mature bucks. All of our practices indeed help the deer but all of the disturbance can send the deer into a nocturnal state. I think that there is a fine line in our management practices of helping and hurting the deer hunting. Bucks don't realize that your buddy is targeting just the does. And of course pressure on does equals pressure on bucks. And of course the does are going to make themselves scarce. I think that driving the does to lie low via prolonged harvesting of them automatically includes the bucks because so much of the bucks' activity is centered around the doe activity. It wasn't until seemingly everyone in the area got on board with shooting does that we saw the population drop suddenly. However the bucks and the does became difficult to hunt as each week of shooting does passed as we then thought shooting the does early was the best timing. ![]() It seemed more would just move in from surrounding areas. When we had so many deer and were shooting many, many does a season it really didn't reduce the population down much. By near the end of the season I mean as late as possible but before the bucks drop their antlers. I think if you shoot the does real hard (hard being whatever you need to kill in a few days) near the end of the season the remaining deer will be back to "normal" a few weeks later. Welcome back Bullwinkle Your thread subjects are always interesting. It's like comparing the San Bernardino terrorist attack with the war in Aleppo - both are tragic and horrible, but there is a big difference in how quickly life gets back to normal for the general population. There is a difference here compared to the situation that several have described (and I too have witnessed in the past) of deer having a tendency to become extremely cautious for a while after the second or third day of gun season. The way the guy went about thinning the population worked in essence like a deadly communicable disease infiltrating a society of humans in ancient times - only the strongest survived, and those that did survive grew stronger and wiser. There are ways we are all the same, but there are ways we are all different. Individual deer have different personalities and traits just like people do. It kept them from being one of the victims, and three years of that was like watching the same movie over and over until you can recite all the lines from memory. The deer that didn't get killed are mostly the ones with a higher level of intelligence and survival instinct. This situation Bull described doesn't surprise me. No does are shot on plots (except youth weekend) and we only hunt does on the property lines. The more experienced I become, the more and more I become convinced low pressure does are key to great hunting. The conclusion is he has a generational issue that the deer have been trained to move at night. He has a great number of mature deer but they don't see them and they see very few deer hunting The deer are there, they eat his 30 acres of plots every year. The last 3 years his deer have gone nocturnal. ![]() 20-30/year for about 3 years to get the population under control He put in a no buck rule for a while and hammered the does. The property was overrun with does when he bought it. He has about 30 acres of great plots and feeding destinations I have a friend who owns about a section of land down south who has intensively managed it for about 7 years. This will sound untrue but I can assure you it is. ![]()
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