What About Doe Harvest MDF Podcast

[robby denning]

Hey Roksliders

The Mule Deer Foundation hosted a podcast episode at Western Hunt Expo with biologists & hunters. This was the segment we did on Doe Harvest. It's a very dynamic issue and varies from area to area, so please listen to the entire segment before commenting. It might be different than you think.

@Rambo MDF x BDF thanks for having us on!

 

[180ls1]

Interesting. Exposed some of my ignorance to the topic.

 

[NDHUNTER24]

Its interesting to hear the other side. Growing up primarily around whitetail hunting, doe hunting was pretty common. @robby denning is there a full video about your conversation with them?

 

[robby denning]

Its interesting to hear the other side. Growing up primarily around whitetail hunting, doe hunting was pretty common. @robby denning is there a full video about your conversation with them?

Hey, that 7 minutes is all they've released, but it was about an hour convo. I think they chopped it up becuase we covered many topics within deer. This clip was where we primarily just talked doe harvest.

thanks for the listen and for chiming in.

My WT friends seem to accept doe harvest as normal, my MD friends blow their tops (sometimes) lol.

 

[NDHUNTER24]

Well theres definitely a time and place thats for sure. Our deer herds (whitetails) took a big hit from EHD a few years ago. They numbers seem to be getting better finally. It seemed to help the mulies in the area some as well. But thats a different topic, sorry!

 

[Hunterscamera]

Super interesting. Definitely going to be reading up on this

 

[idelkslayer]

What I think I heard was that as herds approach carrying capacity having fewer does can improve health of the individuals in the herd which can result in greater fawn survival and 50% of those fawns are bucks so theoretically fewer does could mean more bucks? Or just healthier and bigger bucks? Did I misunderstand that or am I close?

 

[Macegl]

Coming from a livestock background and working in range management, some of the unchallenged untouchable deer management strategies just make me shake my head in frustration.

I realize there are differences, but in a lot of cases biology is biology. We don’t keep ancient cows, why? Because old cows have worn out teeth, calve later, raise lighter calves etc. With cows, a light calf you lose money, with deer a light fawn is a dead fawn.

Same goes for range management. I have an old cattleman friend/mentor who was always very conservative when it came to cow numbers. When he would see someone who was overstocked, whose range looked poor, whose cows were starting to look a little thin, he would say, “my dad always taught me, you can’t starve a profit out of a cow”.