Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting Shooting Fawns

Before I started my personal population reduction war on them they came nightly and ate whatever they could get. I could have killed a few with a hammer and just sitting by an open window while the ate the flower beds. When they eat your favored veggies they can motivate a person to get a little pay back.

In the last three years there has been 28 killed on the roads that surround the half section I live in. Those 28 are only the ones I have personally seen. That does not account for the ones that made it off the road right of way or which were picked up quickly by someone. I managed to not wreck a car hitting one here, but obviously 28 deer HBC is kinda pricey for the neighbors.

When you add in the 8 deer I have killed reducing the population during deer season, 36 deer killed off half a section is a lot of problem. Like I said, only one had horns and he got it because I was pretty certain he was the one who broke down the electric fence to get at my garden.

Did you hear about the baby seal who went into a bar? The bartenders asks "What will you have?"
Baby seal replies "Anything but a Canadian Club".

Memorial Day weekend two more were hit by cars around this half section. That makes 11 now since the beginning of the year. Add the four I killed last fall and that's fifteen, a lotta damn deer for half a section of land. I still haven't seen the two big does with their four fawns. Those deer will be ten deer this fall and eighteen next year If I do nothing and the cars don't get 'em. To the best of my knowledge, there are at least an additional 3 big adult does likely to twin this spring and a couple of yearlings likely to produce single fawns. Add to them an equal number of bucks and it's obvious that this half section is still grossly overpopulated.

Doing nothing is not really an option. Killing bucks is not an option, even if I could bait them onto a single acre with a massive corn pile, use a silencer, use an accurate CF rifle and hired some help to process them I couldn't kill all the bucks and stop the reproduction. Even stopping the reproduction completely cold would still leave an overpopulation. I am the only person hunting then in this half section. I think it's very probable I am the only person hunting them within a half mile in any direction of the boundaries.

If I want a garden and flower beds my only option is killing all the big does I can and some of the yearling does too. I can really only reliably kill and process four deer. This is a neighborhood of five or so acre sites, so gun hunting is almost out of the question, every home within 500 feet must give permission for you to shoot. I am lucky to have a wife who'll sit with me while I whack Bambi and a neighbor who is tired of building secure exclosures every time he wants to plant anything who'll do the same.

Down in the metro deer zone where unlimited antlerless tags are available, most of the LGUs are PAYING people to kill and haul away deer. The only figure I have heard is $300/ deer. Seems like a lot of money/deer to me, but I have never tried to verify the number.

Even with something like 500,000 deer hunters in this state, not killing does is just not an option to control deer numbers. It takes severe winters, wolves, disease, cars and hunters all working together. Oddly, MNDNR is being forced to produce a comprehensive plan to manage deer mainly by aperioditic low population levels in specific areas by hunters. When a high success percentage is 40% and 20% is a lot more common, managing deer for them is likely to be neither successful nor reliable at any level because adverse reports of population do not move hunters to where the deer are readily available. They just don't hunt for a year or two or three.

Here's an interesting strategy for you. Does run fawns off and they travel a good distance before finding new home, especially buck fawns.
I have a friend that's a biologist, he carefully examines every doe with fawns he sees, if one or the best is both are buttons, BOOM down goes momma....thus his buck doe ratio is very in check compared to most properties in the area. Like I said he's a biologist and studies deer for a living, pretty smart thinker too

Winter kill is not an issue where I hunt. A mature doe is less likely to lose her fawns to yotes though.

In AZ we get one, if you get drawn. Depends on where you get drawn, could be any antlered deer, any antlered white tail or any antlered mule deer. Or down south any antlered Couse deer.

No fawns for me...no matter what. powdr