Check out this buck's range - Mississippi Delta "update"

Deer university did an episode on buck seasonal travel and it was pretty interesting. As I recall some bucks went 1000 yards every year to summer, one buck went 25 miles to the same place, passing through several neighborhoods and crossing major highways. There was nothing pushing him out, and he made the migration every spring and fall, they attribute it to the individual personality of the deer.

Id guess round 3... 350 deer a yr

The biggest reason culling doesn’t make much of a difference is because , how do you determine what doe needs to be culled? A buck actually gets more antler coding genetics from the mother more than the father. This is especially difficult, because a young buck is more likely to move far away from where it was born. So realistically, the doe probably isn’t even on the same property as the buck.

Honestly, the “cull” thing is more of an excuse for some hunters to justify shooting a small buck or a buck that doesn’t meet club standards.

Very cool info. Thanks for sharing. Be sure to update us in the coming months.

Exactly, there are deer who have done the complete opposite and pretty much stay in one place their whole life. I think the takeaway should be that all deer are unique, what you know about one probably won't be the same for the next.

Some bucks are brawlers and all they do is fight and try to frick. Others do the exact opposite and do very little breeding. They are all unique is the growing consensus.

that's a cool map and the info you posted.

If I am not wrong there is new data(according to the states biologists) that if a buck is in the lower 30% of his age class he will never meet regional averages. I have even had state biologist say that if a spike has less the 2” spike to kill him. Buck:doe ratio is 1:1.5 and I can’t just kill 45 does and a couple bucks. We will start this management program this coming fall.

This is in strict heard management where it is more about available food/nutrition for other deer/bucks. This recommendation is for 3,000+ acres. It is more about letting your average and above average deer strive by taking the inferior competition out. Again, it isn’t about genetics, but it is about available nutrition. This is also regional averages on score and points.

I’ll be damned. His December/January locations were on what was my old deer camp before the state acquired it a few years back.

Makes you wander why we have to debone deer meat coming from a neighboring state

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This is in strict heard management where it is more about available food/nutrition for other deer/bucks. This recommendation is for 3,000+ acres.

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They refer to this as standing crop management but you left out a very important caveat that even they admit, some bucks are late bloomers and this only works if your shooters are 5.5+ and every gun on your place can accurately age a deer on the hoof. It’s the absolute finishing touch on top of an otherwise perfect management scenario, where age structure and ratio are perfect and the only limiting factor is biomass, and in reality it’s to shave off a little of the protein bill for places that charge by the inch.