Bill, Pat, I agree with both of you. And we do not harvest yearlings and we will not allow hunting a doe who has a fawn or twin fawns with her. A Doe with out young are open to hunting if we feel we need or want to harvest. We watch over the herd as much as we can on a 175 acre low fence piece of property. We keep around 10% of our land in year round wildlife food plots to improve our numbers and quality of the deer that live yr round on the place. Our County is a 4 deer per hunter season and runs for about 4 months, with a 13" spread on the bucks, this will usually be measured by "He is outside the ears" when hunting as reference before shooting. It has improved the antler size of harvested deer and usually adds age to the harvested Buck. We also see where fawn survival is around 30% as an average yearly count goes. And we have not figured out how we count our Buck to Doe ratio, because of the "never seen buck before" that show up regularly. We see about 20 of those bucks show up during the rut. And that makes it hard to count buck to doe ratio's. We try to hunt 4 yr old or older bucks, so some years we will harvest and some years we don't. We will most always get a shot but as bow hunters, we will not always "get er done". lots of variables come into play, including "we missed over or under". Comments like he jumped the string might be herd around the camp fire lol. I like bow hunting and will hunt several days a week in small sets of 90 min or so and I see several deer that most hunters will take, but I like watching a scrap being refreshed as I watch at 20 or 30 yds, or deer bedding under me as I hunt, I just like being out there in the woods. lots to see.
Tracy
PS, I am happy when I see the harvest pictures you show here guys, I like the smiles and it is nice to compare the deer from other parts of the country.
Tracy
