re: Old time deer management ideas...why do people love em

quote:

---

Deer don't eat pine, pine straw, pine nuts, or pine bark

---

thanks for that info. despite being in the woods all my life and spending my career in the woods, I had no idea.

quote:

---

The trees were planted 12 years ago in rows 5 ft apart and every 5 ft on the row. The trees have never until this last year been trimmed or thinned. They are now 30-40 ft tall and no sun reaches the understory at all. The pine straw is literally 1-3 ft deep underneath. There is an occasional poke salat, or hackberry tree where a pine died from beetles but that is it.

---

then things should get a lot better soon after the thinning now that sun can reach the ground. I don't often get to see such clean understory in our pine plantations as you have. Even the ones that were on reclaimed iron ore pits have grasses and forbs and some vines coming up that the deer browse on.

quote:

---

LoneStarTiger

---

quote:

---

quote:
The trees were planted 12 years ago in rows 5 ft apart and every 5 ft on the row. The trees have never until this last year been trimmed or thinned. They are now 30-40 ft tall and no sun reaches the understory at all. The pine straw is literally 1-3 ft deep underneath. There is an occasional poke salat, or hackberry tree where a pine died from beetles but that is it.


then things should get a lot better soon after the thinning now that sun can reach the ground. I don't often get to see such clean understory in our pine plantations as you have. Even the ones that were on reclaimed iron ore pits have grasses and forbs and some vines coming up that the deer browse on.

---

Exactly. If they were planted that way the forester did not know what he was doing. Spacing is much better for health of the tree with wider spacing.

I have 1100 acres in west central Alabama and we have a mixture of row crops (soybeans and corn), a few pastures, and more than half in planted pines.

More deer are killed in the pines than anywhere. We have been 8pt or better and outside the ears for 6 years. We take between 8-9 bucks every year.

Regarding the OP question, we do extensive game cameras and each August we determine the number of does that need to be taken. This year it is 12. The does will be taken in the first 30 days of our season (before the rut starts, we shoot no does after the run begins). Our gun season runs the Saturday before Thanksgiving and ends on Jan 31. Per Alabama law we are allowed a doe every day, and 3 bucks which the third must be at least a 3pt. So our club rules are more strict than state law.

quote:

---

Didn't mean to ruffle feathers but you were the one disagreeing with me, remember.

---

I've kinda had a shite morning, so I will admit they are easily ruffled today

quote:

---

The green biar and posion ivy don't even grow in there.

---

sucks for deer, but tell your landowner to call me if they ever need it cruised, I never get in anything that clean

quote:

---

And the game cameras tell us that the does have been having singlet or twin deliveries for the last several years and no triplets.

---

From what I was taught, triplets in deer occur at about the same rate as twins so in human births.

quote:

---

During the Great Depression, many deer populations were almost hunted to the point of almost near 'extinction' in many areas. Same can be said of many other types of game.

It took several decades afterward for many of the wildlife populations to recover from overhunting.

That why a lot of the old-timers look down upon killing a doe. To them it was about survival.

---

So true!! The men who survived the Great Depression and the days of very low deer populations would not kill does. They passed on this same mind set to the next generation of hunters they trained. It's this second generation of "don't ever kill a doe" deer hunters who are today's grand dads. Very few of that generation will ever agree to killing very many does. I grew up in the generation of "the only good spike is a dead spike." Despite all the scientific evidence that later disproved this, it was hard for me to change. Having said all that, the number of does that should be killed to kill a herd healthy or improve it's health is affected by the overall health of the herd. If the herd's not doing well (for a large number of possible reasons) one may not need to harvest many doe that season.

BP, if a WLF agent told you that, I'm not sure I would believe them. I'm also going by what I was told, but it was from a man with 3 ph d's and one of them was in whitetail deer reproductive anatomy.

I also know that from my trail cams, I may get weeks and weeks worth if pictures of a doe with only one fawn, and then there will be a pic with two. So it makes me question how many does have twins and I never happen to see them both in the same pic.

Just my 2 cents.