So as most of you know our deer numbers here in Oregon arent near what they used to be or what they could be. what are some of your ideas on fixing this problem? I know my opinion wont be a popular one but I have spent a ton of time researching this subject and I feel like the answer is very simple. We all know that our buck to doe ratio is way out of whack! There just arent enough bucks to breed all of the does, seeing very small spotted fawns in October tells me that doe didnt get bread until at least her 3rd cycle....not good for fawn survival. This spreads the little ones way out giving the predators much more time to pick the off when they are still defenseless instead of them all hitting at around the same time and the predators only getting so many before they are big enough to have a chance at getting away. My thoughts on fixing this would be to implement a 3pt minimum, not forever, maybe 5-10 years. This would allow the buck population to really grow. I have read several different statistics with as high as 75% of the bucks killed being forkies. Also we need to kill more does, Ive heard all of the arguments, people saying how its dumb to kill does because they are the ones who have X number of fawns over a life time.....not if they are not getting bread theyre not. Another obvious problem is the lack of predator control. People I understand that these animals are harder to hunt without dogs but they are not that hard to find and kill. A good way of taking out excess does would be to issue an antlerless tag for every bear or cougar a hunter kills in the unit it was killed in. You have to take these animals in and have them checked anyway so it would be easy to confirm the kills. It would be incentive to hunt predators, help with the ratio, and help the meat hunters that complain about the antler restriction. This is just food for thought, I know it wont be a popular opinion but I also know it would work!
Posted on: Thu, 02 Oct 2014 23:25:19 +0000
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