Deer managment rules for your property?

[Jeff S]

Just wondering how you manage your property. I believe a new hunter (5 or fewer deer to their credit) should shoot whatever they choose, but what other managment rules do you have in place?

[PerchJerker]

I read a great article on deer managment years ago that talked about realistic expectations, and for properties under 200+ acres they recommended not shooting 1.5 year old bucks but shooting 2.5 year olds and eventually encountering the occasional older buck. Makes sense to me, a doe's home range is at least 640 acres (square mile) in the best habitat, and buck's home ranges are much bigger, like 1,000+ acres (and much much bigger during the rut). It's just not realistic to CONSISTENTLY or REGULARLY expect to shoot bigger older deer in areas where their home ranges cross many, many private properties and where they encounter many different hunters. But passing on young bucks can make a difference, even if only some of the hunters/landowners do it, so if you hunt in an area like that you could have higher expectations.

I have 40 acres in the north woods and am surrounded by miles of National Forest and other public land. My buddy owns 150 acres close to me and we lease an 80 of Potlatch that's between us. My management guidelines are that new and beginning hunters that don't have a couple deer under their belt should shoot anything they want and be proud of it. And I encourage people that hunt with me to shoot does. For bucks, I want them to be at least 2.5 year olds for guys that have shot a few deer before. Even some 2.5 year olds aren't that big in the big woods, and I've passed on more of them than I've shot, hoping that we'll see them again in a year or two. The typical 2.5 year old near my place is an 8 pointer that's out by the tips of his ears, and has 6 inch tines. Too make it simple and not too much pressure for people hunting with me, I tell them 8 pointers out by the tips of the ears are okay to shoot. Nice deer but not what I consider wallhangers so I let them go and shoot does and wait for Big Daddy to show up.

My buddy that owns the 150 says he has the same guidelines, but by 10:00 on opening morning he reverts to brown is down. He doesn't hunt much and isn't a very good hunter and doesn't shoot very many small bucks, so I tell myself to not worry about it.

I wish Minnesota had longer hunting seasons and not during the peak of the rut. Give hunters more time to be selective if they want, and protect some of the young bucks that run around rut-crazed and get blasted because their hormones are acting up.

[B. Amish]

one of the greatest ideas i've seen is switching from having a biggest buck contest to a biggest doe contest in your hunting party

it takes some pressure off of the little bucks since people won't think that by shooting the first buck they see they may end up with the biggest buck and thus the cash prize or whatever the winner gets

[grizzald]

If the rack is not wider than it's ears, we don't shoot at it. But it's getting harder to find big ones with all the hunting pressure and long seasons now a days.

[iceman16]

at our huntin camp near the middle of nowhere minnesota we have a rule if its not 8 points or bigger it walks. when i first heard that i thought it would be one or two deer shot a year out of our party. i have hunted there 4 years now and when i was at the shack a couple weeks ago i counted 14 racks over 8 that we shot and another 3 that we found from winter kill. its not a rule set in stone but thats kinda our rule.

iceman

[Guest]

I will go hunt for food... I will take a doe or 2.. taste much better than a rutting buck.

If I see a decent buck, I will take it, dont get me wrong.. but I'm not out there for a trophy. I have had 1 true trophy buck wandering my land for a few years, and some other very respectable bucks... hard to say what will happen until that time comes.

I dont eat antlers... but they sure look nice displayed when the rack is huge.

[luckey]

We started with a few guidlines about 4 years ago. Now there are about 7 parties (approximatly 1600 acres involved). Simple rules, shoot does and nice bucks. Nice is at least an 8 and no baskets. There are no penalties for mistakes and the young or old can shoot whatever they want. The big question is does it work? Last year was the third year that some of us were following the guidelines and we harvested six very nice bucks one that scored over 160. So, in short, yes for us it appears to be working. One pleasant suprise was just seeing all the smaller bucks!

[lawdog]

Since the all-season license I've become ultra selective myself. Not everybody I hunt with can get out that much though and some are stuck with our two day season, so they unfortunately still have to go for a brown its down mentality (although they try to do the best they can to avoid taking the baby bucks). The youngsters have the green light on anything they can legally tag.

[Nova]

This will be our first year with a QDM in our area. We shot 6 1.5 year old bucks off of 200 acres last year for 8 guys and I decided that was enough of that kind of harvest. I read a ton of info on it and adopted a program. Surprisingly to me all but one neighbor was in on the plan. Basic rules are if you haven't shot a buck you can take anything. If you have it has to be outside the ears, we didn't put a point restriction on because most of our 1.5 year olds are 6 and 8 pointers. We also want to shoot does which we have a huge herd of. We are not supposed to shoot fawns because they may be fawn bucks. We planted 2 food plots and left 10 acres of beans standing. We did implement a fine of $25 for bucks inside the ears and that money goes to next years food plots. Only 2 in the party this year have not gotten bucks(both young hunters) and I have seen 2 large bucks around. I am excited to see how this plan works a couple years down the road.

[bigbucks]

We don't really have any rules for management, but those of us who really hunt a lot are passing on all the small bucks, unless we'd get to the second day of gun season & as a party we have very few deer (say less than 5). Our other loose rules are, everyone takes their share of venison unless they don't want it & someone else does, also we share our tags.

We've never run into a problem with the two weekends where the All-Season guys had to burn their tags on other people's small bucks. If that ever happens, I'd guess the rules could get more hard & fast, but we usually have at least 10 hunters.