TXhighrack

"that still wouldnt affect the ratio"

How is that?? Let's say that you see 40 fawns, you put 20 in the buck "catagory" and 20 in the doe "catagory". You have just increased the total number of bucks by 20 and the total number of does by 20. Now lets say that you have a 1:2 Buck:doe ratio, and that the total number of bucks is 50 and the total number of does is 100. If you add 20 deer to each catagory, then you are going to change the buck:doe ratio.

silentassassin

txhighrack,

You may be right, but every article that I have ever read on the subject disagrees with you.

shed33

[ I talked with our local biologist here and he said they fly areas to get a count of bucks and does. He also stated that its very difficult in this country to get an accurate count because of the habitat. He said they pretty much dont even worry about trying to count whitetails, instead they focus on the elk since they are easier to see from flying and that elk are the priority.

As for a fawn crop, it should be very close to 50/50 annually which is going to contribe greatly to a 1 to 1 ratio. I remember ALLOUTDOORS talking about his in one of his posts. Like he said the Buck to Doe ratio is probably better than a lot of folks believe.

Accurately estimating buck to doe ratios by watching deer feed in the summer time can be tricky, well at least here anyway. I can't speak for other areas of the USA in regards to how the bucks and does feed in the same areas and use areas during the summer.......but here I scout (June through August) and hunt areas in early archery season where I rarely see a doe, maybe 3-5 during the month of September. The only thing I see daily is the bucks that use these areas for bedding and feeding, Why because I am watching and hunting bacherlor groups of bucks or loner bucks that do not feed or hang out in the same areas as does. I can glass the valleys below, say a mile or so away and see large amounts of does, while the bucks are hanging much higher in elevation. I believe this is so here because deer are not concentrated and can pretty much live and feed for numerous miles in any direction. In the higher elevations the Buck #'s are much higher in numbers than doe #'s and this obviously misrepresents the true buck to doe ratio.

If I were to drop down in elevation say 1 to 3 thousand feet and hunt the doe core areas then I would see just the opposite, tons of does and very few mature bucks feeding, this would also give a false representation of bucks to doe ratio as well.

I try to combined the two, the buck hangouts and the doe core areas and come up with numbers this way. From what I count here our ratio is probably no worse than 3 doe to 1 buck..

Shed

UncleNorby

While fawns may be born 50/50 male to female, their mortality rate will essentially parallel that of the general population. Fawns don't really participate in reproduction either (except the odd doe fawn that is bred). You can pretty much toss them out.

silentassassin

Does anyone have or know where there is any data to back up the notion that the birth ratio of whitetails is close to 50/50. I have always heard that it was more like 65/35 does/bucks.

shed33

Silent,

David Morris has research on it in his Books, "Hunting Trophy Whitetails" and "Advanced Stratagies for Hunting Trophy Whitetails"

Double Creek

You are right, I stand corrected. For some reason my brain was saying add to one take from the other, zero net effect. But now I see it does not work that way.

Sorry, I'm terrible with numbers, and I'm a CPA!!

silentassassin

I can still tell that if I were doing it I would just not count fawns. I would want to deal with concrete numbers not contrived numbers. Which is exactly what you would be doing if you counted fawns. You would be counting deer and dividing them by an arbitrary number that would almost positively be wrong.

Double Creek

Silent, until I had some hard scientific data stating 99% of the time the birth ratio is x to x, I am with you, why guess?

And if the fawns are not breeding, how do they effect a buck to doe ratio anyway?

Dirt2

Our local biologist flies by helicopter for about a week in early January, before horns drop. He counts bucks, does, and fawns. Our western MT counts have typically run about 20:100:65 for the last couple years, I check each year, haven't called him yet this year.

On male:female ratios in deer, our local elk herd has run a 38:62 ratio of bull calves to cow calves for over a decade now. This situation is not at all unusual. The best scientific sourcebook I've seen is a book put out by the Wildlife Institute, called Whitetails something or other. I got it through interlibrary loan at my local library. This book weighs about 25 lbs. and has accessible-to-the-layman science on almost every aspect of whitetail ecology, biology, anatomy, etc. you could wish to see. On fawn buck:doe ratios, it makes it clear that disparities of 2 to 1 in the ratios do occur rather commonly. It seems that the general principle involved is that expanding herds produce more doe fawns, and overpopulated herds produce more bucks. The exact nuts and bolts of why this is so are still being worked out. Anyhow, with the new craze for QDM, one factor one might deal with is that as you whack does and drop herd density, while at the same time improving your habitat with crops planted for the deer, you may actually trigger your local deer to produce fawn ratios skewed heavily toward does. That last sentence is still theoretical, mind you, but I'll bet we'll start seeing some new science on that in the next decade.