MuleyMadness Hunting Forums

YUP!

So if I understand Prooutdoors... NO EVIDENCE = BAD. Over-generalization???
It seems to me that we all understand that it's not the buck to doe ratio that's the solution to our problem, it's the number of fawns that we need to carry through the winter to increase the population. I think that increasing that buck:doe ratio has some merit & I hope that we will see some initial benefits to our deer herd, but it is not a long term solution.
Given the WBs recent reputation, they'll roll out a new plan in a couple years anyway when the herd population doesn't immediately shoot up to objective like they thought (or maybe were told by SFW) it would. Look at me being a conspiracy theorist!!!

Would you mind expounding on how higher B2D ratios will improve things in the long term?

Tugg wrote:Would you mind expounding on how higher B2D ratios will improve things in the long term?

Umm, never said it would. There is some validity to what The Ox pointed out. Statistically fawn production is better in units with lower B2D ratios. Units with much higher B2D ratios fawn production is terrible (especially our limited entry units)… so NO a high B2D is not the long term solution.

Case in point:
- The Ogden unit has a three year average of 17 bucks per 100 does but also has one of the highest fawn to doe ratio averages over that same period of 89 fawns per 100 does.
- Paunsaugunt has a three year average of 55 bucks per 100 does & has a fawn to doe ratio of at 53 fawns per 100 does which is typical of all the limited entry units except Henry Mountains (72).

Maybe it’s because the bucks can spend more time breeding than competing (just a thought ).

I completely agree with Proutdoors, we should direct the majority of our attention to fawn retention. I like that the State is buying up winter range & designating it as WMAs, etc. The poor deer need somewhere to go since we’ve developed most of their winter range for our homes. I hope to see further improvement in the Ogden herd since the purchase & development of the Middle Fork WMA. I'd rather see fawn numbers greater than 75-80 fawns per 100 does than 40-50 bucks per 100 does... that's the future of the herd.

I misunderstood. You made some great points.

thats kinda what i was getting at in looking at dat it seems that most units did best on fawn crops when the b2d ratio was 18-22 /100. there were a few cases i seen 10/100 ratio did well but seemed on avg 18-22 was the magic number to better fawn crops. so if having 20 bucks /100 raises fawn crops than indeed raising the buck numbers is a good thing. lots of variables though so i guess you can toss this around back and forth whether it will help or not.