Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting Do big old does ever "NEED" to be killed?

The people who lease our 2 cattle ranches each have stories, in one the lady has been chased out of her garden more than a few times by an old Whitailed doe and the other people's cross cattle dog currently has 27 stitches thanks to a Mule Deer doe last week by their hay shed. So ya they occasionally NEED killin' here in NE Wa. Muddy

Where I hunt, I get to watch deer a lot. A whole lot more than average. If you cannot see a doe with her fawn(s) the only clue you get is that she will look old. I don't think they ever get so old that they can't have fawns, there are records of 16 YO does having twins. A doe will have 1 fawn until she hits 3-4 YO and then twins/triplets are more common. All of the does I have seen with 1 fawn look young almost without exception. An old doe, 7 or older, always looks very old to me. I have never seen teeth that said old when the deer was young.

Last week I saw a typical fawn (for around here) that'd go 100 pound or so being followed by two fawns that were tiny, wouldn't have gone 60 pounds. Took a while to make sense of what I was looking at.

Around here, cars/wolves can get the fawns but not many does I have seen that should have had a fawn don't. Don't know quite why, since half of all fawns don't make it to the first year. Maybe that half takes a real beating come November and over the first winter.

I have eaten old does. Unless you grind them, they can be damn near too tough to eat literally. I hit my first deer with a car in 2013. She had fawns, but they weren't with her. She was really old, older than I could guess by the teeth. Very tough and stringy meat. Made jerky and burger out of her.

Much as the population in my neighborhood needs reducing, there's a couple I am leaving alone because they're so old. They just don't eat well enough. I can take a couple more younger better on the table deer, between the wife and myself we have four tags and I can get more in a hurry should they be needed. The "stand" is comfortable enough no one minds sitting in it with me until Bambi shows up.

last dry doe I took I watched her walk towards me for 3/4 of a mile, all by herself. it's pretty open country where I hunt, so it aint hard to see if a doe is by herself, even in the company of others, you can tell which fawns belong to which mama if you watch them for a little bit.

I just shoot the biggest does I see that don't have spotted fawns. Seems like the yearlings do just fine afterward. I often see them paired up together later or sometimes even pairing up with young bucks like spikes. They often come back and regularly visit the same food sources where the big doe got tagged. Food abounds around here most of the year, and I rarely see a lone yearling that looks skinny, even in late season.

I shoot what I feel like on a particular day. The only thought I ever put into pulling the trigger is 'do I want to kill this deer'

Yep, same here. We eat several deer a year so freezer gets filled before we get picky.

Gotta disagree. Mature deer, whitetails anyway, buck or doe, taste much better to me. Deep red meat, bigger chunks. Young whitetail venison has less flavor, somewhat like veal. Among the best venison I ever had was an big WV mountain buck that was rutted up big time and smelled to High Heaven. As I was 250 miles from home, I had him processed by a local guy working out of his garage. He did a bang-up job and the meat was excellent.

Cars, Indians, white guys and coyotes go through the deer pretty quick around here.


I personally don't know any deer.

and......

My thoughts have always been that the big old girls are more regular into estrus and kick off the young early, so, a better piece of walking buck bait that young or immature does.
But they are sharp when it comes to detecting danger.
The area I'm in is poor in soft mast after the figs and wild grapes are gone.
If we have a bad acorn crop, putting the does with young still following on bait is very easy.

old does,smartest deer in the woods. by far the smartest.

They NEED to be killed 'cause they NEED to be in my freezer.

I've been hunting the same 200 acre farm for 14 years. My experience has been that once a mature doe gets your number, it is probably best to take her out. An earlier post is very close to mine. Starting about 2004 we had a doe I named Madge. Madge had a hard life. I think I nailed her mother one year and the next year my son nailed her son. Same weekend, same stand. She had us pegged. For the next 4 seasons, she was absolute hell to live with. She would seek me out and stand there and snort. She was completely hysterical to the point where the other deer wouldn't listen to her.

Having said that, I try to keep the mature doe as much as I can. That same stand has been dry for the better part of 10 years, because I honked off the matriarch , and I think she got the herd bypassing the little peninsula where the stand is situated. This is the first year in a decade that I'm getting deer back there. Deer will do that. I read an article a while back where the deer at the border between East and West Germany are still unwilling to venture into the clear cut even though the guard towers have been torn down.

Overall, matriarchs are a good thing for deer. They know where the good food is located, and know where the best bedding is. Shooting them should not be done simply for the meat. Culling a subordinate doe is preferable. In a year or so they may have relocated anyway, and their passing usually does not disrupt the herd.

I shoot deer strickly for the meat. I don't pass up any legal deer. This years fawn will survive without mama if the winter is not too bad, if it is bad winter, they won't survive, mama or not

Somewhere I read that buck fawns actually have a higher survival rate if their mama ends up in my freezer, or suffers some lesser fatal event. Why that is wasn't totally clear, but I'm happy to help them out. I try pretty hard to avoid shooting the current crop, but sometimes without other deer nearby to compare with, it's hard to be sure. The last doe I watched for an extended period had all the physical traits (mainly facial characteristics) of a mature deer, but when she got close, it was clear she was pretty small.

I just finished a muzzle loader hunt in eastern CO and all the deer in that area are whitetail which area lot smaller than mule deer. Pretty hard to compare them age wise in an area that the weeds. etc. are as tall as the deer. I shot a year old buck with shorter horns that qualified it as antlerless and it was every bit as big as any doe I saw.

In the past, I have shot smaller ones.

Unlike a lot of Texas, we have a lot of browse here. miles

That works too. Its not a management way to do it. Ranchers don't do it like that.

But it works. Some put more into the game than others, and there is not a thing wrong with either direction.

Bottom line its food, bottom line you dang sure can't eat the antlers. Well the cur differs but at least its teaching him to help hunt sheds. LOL.

This sounds good and all, but just how do you determine t

Where I hunt, I get to watch deer a lot. A whole lot more than average. If you cannot see a doe with her fawn(s) the only clue you get is that she will look old. I don't think they ever get so old that they can't have fawns, there are records of 16 YO does having twins. A doe will have 1 fawn until she hits 3-4 YO and then twins/triplets are more common. All of the does I have seen with 1 fawn look young almost without exception. An old doe, 7 or older, always looks very old to me. I have never seen teeth that said old when the deer was young.

Last week I saw a typical fawn (for around here) that'd go 100 poun



Miles, I have read the same report from a northern Minnesota study. I was amazed at the study that a 16 yr old doe was still producing fawns on a regular basis. Because of this I will never shoot an old doe in wolf country . Those old does are the only deer that can train a young deer how to deal with these wolves. I have noticed over the years that our deer are getting a lot older in northern Wis. I am sure young does that give birth to fawns are the first fawns to be killed. Those old does are terribly hard to hunt. Most will disagree , they are smarter than an buck out there and they never let their hormones get to them. They are always super alert. I have tried shooting them and only was successful one time. It was an 8 yr old doe according to the DNR. It had no fawns near by but was still milking and no doubt had fawn around.

I have only bagged two bucks in my time of deer hunting. The majority are does since they are what the farmers want shot the most! Must be my luck since I usually only see does anyhow?