Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting Lots of small/young deer this year

We have quite a few deer on our place and I've seen more small deer this year than I can remember. I was bow hunting the other day and a small doe came out that I dont think would have weighed 50 lbs. I let her walk and after a while a big doe came out with 2 small ones. I dont think either of these little ones would have gone 40 lbs.

None of the little ones had spots, but I expected them to be larger than they are. I guessing the does were bred around Christmas, so a 200 +/- gestation period would make these drop in July. That's the only reason I can come up with for these young deer. Our normal rut is the 3rd +/- week of Nov.

The other day, I saw a doe with a young one that was what I would call normal. The yearling was 3/4 as large as the doe. This is more of what I'm use to seeing.

Anyone else seeing an unusually large number of young/small deer?

Haven't got much time in the woods yet this year, but last year saw a bunch of smalls. One we called Sandwich, thats all you would've gotten. I watched that deer 3 times under the stand before I realized it had antlers/nubs.

@Oldman3

It almost sounds like you had a number of does get missed their first time around last year, and they got bred in their second cycle?

Yes, second cycle bred last year.

We also had fawns dropped in mid July here. They were faring well last we saw them; hoping mamma is still out there and well too. She's a consistent twin fawn producer.

Must have had some rain!

We call them "suit case deer". When you kill one, you can carry it like a suit case.

Magnalite deer. All the meat will fit in an 18" oval Magnalite roaster, ubiquitous in these parts.

To the original poster please be aware that a yearling is not a fawn. A yearling is between one and two years old. I see people mixing this up all the time on the internet.

We clearly had a bumper crop/breeding this past year and from I see on my property[at least] a near total mast failure for this fall.
If we have an extremely bad winter who knows what will happen? We are already at or above carrying capacity
Mother nature taking care?