THE FACTS ON DOE HUNTING
EXCLUSIVE! AUBURN UNIVERSITY SCIENCE-BASED WHITETAIL INSIGHTS
With the advent of quality deer management, opposition toward antlerless harvest in the whitetail world seems mostly a relic of the past. It’s no secret that proper deer management requires keeping the herd in balance with surrounding habitat, which often calls for reductions in deer density. Today, most well-informed deer management regimes include doe harvest as a major tenant in regions with abundant or overabundant populations. In the essential reading, Quality Whitetails, a book that laid the foundation of modern deer management practices, the authors explain how adequate doe harvest can lead to healthier densities, more balanced sex ratios and increased reproductive rates.
Despite antlerless harvest becoming a widely accepted deer management tool, there still exists a plethora of questions concerning the best approaches to antlerless harvest. For example, when is the best time to shoot does? If you talk to five different deer hunters, they will give you five different answers. Another common question is whether it is harmful to shoot a doe with fawns. In this article, we will discuss questions just like these, and discuss relevant data and
