Is Doe Harvest Actually Important?

The best habitat in the world can't offset an overabundant deer population. Bronson, Bonner, and Moriah discuss the challenges of maintaining an adequate doe harvest and why this is such an important component of well-managed properties.

Transcript

Moriah Boggess: 0:01

Welcome to Wildlife Investments, where we discuss research, habitat, hunting, and land management with panel of leading resource managers. Wildlife Investments, resource management by Hey, real quick, before we start the podcast, we hope see you at our second Wild Turkey Management we're holding February 28th, 2026 in Ufala, The course is going to be taught by Drs. Marcus Lashley and Dr. Will Golesby. It's a one-day classroom course. It's going to cover everything from the basics of wild turkey biology, how to make management decisions, different cover types for turkeys. Marcus and Will are even going to get down in the weeds, laying out different properties, walking through scenarios that they've encountered so that you can those to properties you manage. Go to wildlifeinvestments.com, click on page. You'll see all the information you need to sign up. We hope to see you the end of February and you follow.

Dr. Bronson Strickland: 1:05

we are going to talk about one of those topics that's often neglected. People get sick and tired of hearing about, and that is the importance of dough harvests and your population under control relative to and what a big impact that can have on your and the success of your management program. We got three of us today, Dr. Bronson Strickland, our resident deer researcher and expert. Good to be here. This is a really, really important topic. So we wanted to make sure we gave it some airtime and just refresh people's memories of how this topic is.

Moriah Boggess: 1:45

We also have with us Bonner Powell. Bonner is another one of our habitat management deer experts. Bonner, how's it going? Pretty good. Happy to be here. Excited to talk about shooting more deer. And I'm Mariah Boggess, another one of our deer consultants. And we're excited to have this conversation with and we're going to jump right in it. So I'm so sick of people not shooting enough deer and complaining that nothing's changing all the time.

Bonner Powell: 2:15

Is that what we're going to start it with? Just that line right there. That's what's no welcome to nothing. That's the teacher. I'm sick of it. I'm so sick of people not shooting deer and then I do think it is a valuable point that there's only so we can do with it. Like, it's kind of like what Bronson talks about with seesaw, you know, there there's only so high we can habitat value. And without proper harvest, it kind of always is going, you know, I mean, they're going to adapt. It doesn't matter how much, you know, how much burning you do or how much food you have in the woods during the if you've got a a deer per three acres. Right.

Moriah Boggess: 3:03

And it's crazy how much money people will spend on

Bonner Powell: 3:08

Yep.

Moriah Boggess: 3:08

And if we really pull back the covers, the reason putting out feed is to try to improve the nutritional But what is always ignored is the other side of the plane is supply and demand, and no one wants to manage demand. We think about supply all the time. And we talk about habitat management all the time, and people do it. And I'm glad that people do habitat management and we you know, implement that on properties. But I mean, it was we put out that figure recently that like it's just very much so just kind of a visualization of how our brains work with that. You increase the ceiling, that invisible ceiling of nutritional quality, and then no one does anything, and suddenly you went from having 60 deer per square mile, they were poor quality with poor quality habitat, quality habitat, 80 deer per square mile and poor deer. Like, is that really what we want?

Bonner Powell: 4:09

Right. Yeah, I mean, man, people just don't shoot deer, eat kill deer, regardless of bucks or does, man. I mean, what they say, Bronson, at that thing we were the other night, the average licensed hunter in is like one and a half.

Dr. Bronson Strickland: 4:28

Yeah, it it it varies around 1.5. Might be 1.3, 1.6, but yeah, one and a half.

Bonner Powell: 4:35

One and a half.

Dr. Bronson Strickland: 4:36

And just a decade ago, it was two point

Bonner Powell: 4:39

Really? Yeah. Yeah. Ten years ago it was, you know, almost, you know, a little bit more than two and a half or something like that.

Moriah Boggess: 4:46

I know from when I worked in Indiana and North Carolina looking at that data, both of those states uh very different. The kind of hunters, very different, and the way they dough harvest very different. Both of them, it was right at about 1.3 or something. It's consistent, you know, I'm assuming across the range for the most part.

Dr. Bronson Strickland: 5:10

Yep.

Moriah Boggess: 5:11

Yeah.

Dr. Bronson Strickland: 5:12

Yeah. It's being able to deal with only X amount of carcasses, your time and expense to get it

Moriah Boggess: 5:20

It's something I've been I think you and I, Bronson, talked about this. That lot that the idea of being able to quantify all the forage that's out there, there seems to me, and I you and I have seen this on some properties, a between the assumed value or the assumed quality of deer you should have versus what a property is because there's so much food everywhere, it seems like the deer should not be starving. And I think across a property like the bottom line hard was you could quantify how much poundage of food is. Food plots, you could quantify how much poundage of there is. And if we uh use habitat management, we can increase poundage. But I think one of you know a major point that isn't about with just the tonnage uh answer is the quality and variety. And I wonder, you know, kind of going to the Fred Pre nourishment idea, how much value we get by having cover types managed differently, therefore different and tonnage of different species. To me, that seems like the ultimate combination that gives you true quality. It is. Because I think even in like southern Mississippi, you could have a lot of really well-managed pines, but if plant community is dominated by five or six species, might have a lot of tonnage of quote unquote deer but those deer are probably lacking some important, at least micronutrients and maybe even macros during times of the year. Mm-hmm. And that kind of the deer density thing ties into that a lot too.

Dr. Bronson Strickland: 7:13

No, no question about it. And so we we know this is going on, but here a way that we've all seen that verifies what's going on is and and just two examples I give all the time, you go to an ag environment, soybean rich, and the deer wearing the soybeans out, as we would expect. But then you look over on the periphery of that field where there's giant ragweed, and they wear out the giant ragweed. Meaning that's an oversimplification of the of a deer's diet, but they need something else. Now, in this case, it may not be they need a from a positive tissue-building standpoint, maybe they're needing to counter the of all the soybeans that they ate. Maybe they need some more roughage, you know, there's some type of interaction there to where they're overdoing it with this one package this particular plant. They've got to buffer it with another package of chemicals, the giant ragweed. And then quantitatively, the South Texas when this Fed, you see a decided shift in the of deer in a fed enclosure, they start eating that deer normally don't eat in that because of that phenomenon. They're getting too much of a good thing and got to counterbalance it with other other plants. And then there's too much of a bad thing.

Moriah Boggess: 8:50

I I think of the coastal plain, and my experience is coastal plain of North Carolina. I haven't really spent a lot of time in the coastal of Mississippi, but you can have a well-managed forest and there's a lot of deer forage. I like again, a coastal plain of North Carolina, in basil area pine or longleaf forest, there's never a of the year that there isn't a green leaf for deer to that deer consume. I mean, I've watched them eat gulberry, a lot of eat them, eat yopon. And when you look at the understory of that forest, it is mostly wiregrass, yopon, gulberry, and there's some other waxy leaf species. And I've had this conversation with people. I can't prove this. This is me stepping outside of the scientific bounds of what I can prove. But I think if we could do an experiment, you could explain a lot of the variation in antler quality and body mass in that region, not by the amount of tonnage of food available, but by the presence and availability of foods, like, for instance, you rarely see common horseweed. Any of the dominant forbs that we get in central and across the central United States, when you soil, you get a pretty rich plant community. You don't get that in the coastal plain. But I bet one of the reasons you don't see a lot of those is that they probably get consumed by deer so they're underrepresented in that plant because they get dominated and out competed by those leaf species that hold their leaves throughout the

Bonner Powell: 10:41

So my wager is quality is just slightly above dirt, way. You know, yeah.

Moriah Boggess: 10:47

But they can they can chew it and keep going and into landowner, hey, I've got plenty of green everywhere. I don't have a deer harvest issue. There's plenty of food everywhere, and the deer are eating. And so I think that could be true. And the other side also being true is your deer are limited. They are close to carrying capacity, or you know, at least some density dependence happening there. And I wager that in that situation, if I had the acreage and a willing landowner in the coastal plain, I grow 150, 160-inch deer with an extremely low deer Probably a quarter of what most properties have, or less, just to be able to spread out those mouths so that there is enough of those high-quality Forbes to those individuals.

Bonner Powell: 11:43

Yeah. I think something we should talk about for that point is that can be done, but where are you going to find the landowner to shoot those those deer? I mean, that's what I see the problem is. Especially, you know, and I think sometimes it's uh it's easy for us to get caught up in like what the are and how we present those to landowners, but and y'all tell me if I'm wrong, but I see a lot more success with clubs. You know, if we've got a big club of people, we're have one or two, three killers in there that are good you know, 10, 15 doughs a year if we can get them and things like that. But with the single landowner that has a fairly large I see we struggle a lot with getting dough harvest in. And it's just because of the, you know, the separation of work. I mean, it all falls on one person. It's hard to kill 30, 40 deer a year by yourself. And I think that speaks to another problem kind of what we've been experiencing with hunting as well. And we talked about this some the other night, Bronson, at that event is just the willingness of people now to others to hunt on their property to help harvest I think there's a lot of, you know, kind of problems with the system that have allowed a lot of this to happen. I mean, I don't know how y'all feel about that, but you know, again, it's just gonna be really, really hard to a single large landowner who is extremely busy have the job or the means to afford the land, so they to be busy. How do we get them out there, you know, theoretically least 15 to 20 days and only shoot does? Or like we talked about yesterday, brought some, you some poor quality bucks. Mm-hmm.

Dr. Bronson Strickland: 13:41

But I think all of that you you can overcome if you think outside the box a little bit. So you're gonna have to to turn loose some of willingness or wanting to hoard everything and all of the harvest decisions. You're gonna have to trust in a few people and and let them, you know, dough only. Yep. And then you think, well, legally, there's only so many dough. Well, especially if you're in the every state wildlife agency, if you're part of a program like DMAP, you can typically get tags on private lands. And there's a lot of hungry people out there would love to have venison. And so it's just working with your, you know, club members, family members, et cetera, that hunt the property, working with your but you know, where there is a will, there's way. And and to me, we we keep dancing around the theme to me is that the best deer management is very vanilla. And it doesn't get a lot of sensationalism Some of the the most important things that we do is manage deer density. And, you know, and I I make this joke quite a that, you know, there's no diet pill with with with deer management. You mean you just you can't pour out something out of a bag that make them antlers way bigger? There's no product that you might see on and if I just do that, it it's the work. It is the year-in, year-out work of managing density. And even if you lease land and you may listen to us, and I wish I could do all the habitat but we can't because we lease it, understand. But one thing you can control is deer

Bonner Powell: 15:39

Yep.

Dr. Bronson Strickland: 15:40

And that's really boring, and people get tired of hearing it, but it does not negate the of it.

Bonner Powell: 15:46

Yeah. You can you may not be able to do anything with the but you can flex that trigger finger. Also, it's kind of seems to me, Brussels, it's kind of the the tortoise and the hare, you know, the tortoise is gonna end up winning the race, you know, steady dough over a long period of time. You know, we can make huge exponential jumps in like per acre of food, habitat, all of that, but you're gonna have to be consistent across time with that. You can't just make the one jump in a two-year period expect to start killing really, really big deer. You know, it would take, you know, somebody being over 10 years would probably have more success than that's very inconsistent that blows up every, every five years, they get fired up about it, do a lot habitat improvements, and then they walk away for three, you know, the tortoise is gonna win. That's right.

Moriah Boggess: 16:48

So we're kind of talking right now about resource for animals to reach their full potential. The other side of this that's sometimes I think gets over is the fact that the more deer you shoot, the deer you produce. Because of density dependence, deer being a very dependent species, if you kill more deer, you will have more successful reproduction the next year. That's been proven time and time again. You not only see an increase in quality pretty with body size and eventually with antler size, but you have more reproduction. And I don't think it's coincidence. If you look at, and I've done this with several states, looking at the estimated population size for those using state agency data, and some of that is, you know, it varies by state how they calculate it, using that and then using harvest numbers and some of the best states from an antler standpoint. I'm talking, you know, those Midwestern states, Ohio one, for instance, all of them have historically been harvest states. Yeah. People whack the deer in Midwestern states. For the guys who haven't hunted there or or lived or spent time, when gun season starts, and my experience is with Indiana, but man, it's a pumpkin patch. There's people everywhere. It's it's there's a heavy tradition of hunting, and like they light them up. And I don't think it's any accident that those states have always had a heavy hunting tradition, small and areas where deer really get whacked, they're when you look at reproduction numbers, it's hard to tease out what states are better than others. But in general, those, you know, there's there's states. I believe Wisconsin has historically had a little bit reproduction rate, at least measured than some of the you know, southern states at least. And a marker of a healthy deer herd is having a lot of turnover. And that's one thing we look at, you know, and at some point we'll do a podcast talking specifically about deer data we collect and how we analyze it. And there's there's a bunch of different ways you can at deer data to try to parse out what's happening with a deer herd, and a lot of that's looking at trends. But one of those, and some state agencies use this as metric for deer herd health, but one of it's just how of that harvest is yearling dough. Because generally dough harvest is somewhat random. People often shoot for the bigger dough in a group, but body size is is highly variable by individuals. It's so it's somewhat random. And when you start to get in the 20, 30% range of dough harvest being yearlings, you're in you're in a area. But when we walk onto a property that has been poorly poorly harvested, it'll be like 10% or less. And it's just because you have all these old deer aren't successfully reproducing, you have a stagnated Therefore, that's telling you deer are stressed, nutritionally stressed, and you're not having new enter that population. population.

Bonner Powell: 20:00

Yeah, tie that back, tie that back into lactation as You know, if if lactation's in the tank, most of the times out of ten is because they hadn't been shooting enough deer in the past, you know, five to ten years. And and you see a quick response with lactation as you know, after you start foresting deer. It's like a like you said, Mariah, a a guy in my he's he's always said this and he has no, you know, no biological training or anything like that. But he'd always say the more you shoot, the more they you know, just everywhere you hunt, more you more the more they are. And I I always remember, you know, I'll always that because he he's seen that enough times that he knows it. He doesn't now he might not know why and he might not what the contributing factors are, but he knows he's like if I go somewhere and I shoot more, the more deer I shoot, the more they are next year.

Moriah Boggess: 20:58

Most people I don't think understand that at all. There's like an undertone assumption when you're on media and people get on the subject of deer harvest that like if they shoot 10 extra deer this year, there'll be 10 less next year or you know, like, oh, if I just don't shoot a couple for a few years, they'll be everywhere. And it's like, well man, I honestly believe a lot of herds and you know I've I've I've heard this from from people I look up to and you know people I really respect state agency deer biologists in other states that, you know, there's a lot of markers in a lot of states wise, harvest-wise, that would suggest that deer harvest is pretty much compensatory at this point. Like we're not shooting enough deer to really make of a difference. In other words, the number of deer we're shooting now how many we would have to shoot to actually reduce the population, there's a chasm between those two. Simply shooting an extra one that most hunters shoot an extra one wouldn't make much of a difference that you ever even be able to tell. Like we're so far from actually keeping deer down.

Dr. Bronson Strickland: 22:09

Yeah that that's a real apparent when you look at harvest data and you know just lucky enough to be able to do that for a couple decades. And it it was essentially you could you could and Mariah you use the term of density and that and that's really just a response of the population to a change in density. But the change in density has to be meaning it has to change the fundamental between the number of mouths and the food that's available. And what we found even in real productive that when you just bump up your deer harvest to 20% the next year, even though that was a more deer you killed, it was a lot more work, know, on your part, it was not enough to a density dependent response. It was like you needed to double sometimes that amount. And then there might even be and this can be perplexing for people when they're wanting to, we did all this work, now the next year we to see a big response. Usually there's a lag of two years and three years because now we got to let the recover. And we got to let deer take advantage now of new food availability and then they will that in body weight lactation antlers and so So a lot of people find it overwhelming and it is a and it is a big change. The the other thing I I agree with you what you said but but I think the way I would some context on that would be you keep shooting them and I don't remember how you said it keep shooting, they're going to keep going to be there. I I would say for a lot of people the next that would be true. A lot of people when they start standing on population and and harvesting more, well then start responding behaviorally and a lot of don't like that. The one benefit of having a very very dense is that a lot of people simply enjoy seeing a bunch of deer. You know we deal with that all the time with and I love it when we talk to people that have listened and read and followed the stuff we talk about. Mariah I remember we were with a client that just said it. It was like I know I get it we should we we kill more deer. We could do a better job with that. But we like seeing deer. I I have no problem with that as long as there's an understanding of the seesaw the availability relationship and okay you know if if you fit that into your situation and you to see five to fifteen deer every time you hunt, a okay with me that that's all right. As long as you recognize the consequence and reproduction uh repercussions of that that's

Bonner Powell: 25:09

Yeah.

Moriah Boggess: 25:10

The trade off yeah the trade-off yeah yeah this is a bit of kind of tangential in that the property I'm of is a lot more of an exception than the norm for for most landowners but I've been on a couple of properties and in addition to those I think of some state parks I've been over the years in a couple different states didn't allow hunting in their parks. And these being very drastic examples of what happens you don't shoot does period or you're not shooting near enough. But I've been on a couple properties that that was hunting strategy. I remember one growing up before I really even went school and studied it and I remember thinking how much the hunting sucked on that property all you saw was I mean you would see groups of 10 12 does just come in and devour this guy's bait piles that he was using his his logic was he was gonna he was going to bring in the bucks and I remember hunting there over a seeing 50 60 deer and not seeing a single antler he stockpiled so many does that no doubt I mean no doubt obviously were there during the rut for breeding But outside of that from a buck's perspective why would you stay in this small core area that had very little and really high competition for resources and I some ways when when the pendulum swings the other way people really don't harvest those and and they dig into this mindset of stockpiling deer to make this this where there's just so many deer and bucks are coming in that can backfire and make your hunting even worse and maybe even your your buck hunting even worse in a where I had access to to this data or have reviewed data it's well over 10,000 acres and they've had a very strict deer harvest program on that property for a long time but they've had a hard time getting people to shoot does they've really under harvested their doughs and have a high deer density and then they have this on buck harvest that tends to high grade their And so over time you can actually see in their deer data they've had low dough harvest and their buck harvest been getting worse and worse not only from the number animals shot but also from the quality of those And you know we're talking three and a half year old that aren't getting out of out of the teens and that's routine for them. Like to shoot a deer into the 130s or 140s is is an buck on a Midwestern property. And so in that being an example of like man not only is dough harvest really important, I think most people are are shooting some to keep the prop the population turning over they're not doing super great they're not doing bad. And we're always focused on what it could be like if did super great and that that property population was What I'm talking about is like the other side of the when a property stagnates and that's a that's a real Like I've seen that multiple times I'm curious if either of you have seen that on properties you can think of. I think it's the norm.

Dr. Bronson Strickland: 28:31

I don't know if stagnate is the right word I that that certainly can be appropriate. I would say I think it's the norm that it's an equilibrium that they have reached a a new norm based on the number of deer that are there and the extent to which the habitat is managed and the acreage of food plots that are provided is that there is not going to be any noticeable until something overwhelmingly changes. And whether it's adding food to the system or mouths from the existing food supply, that is only way there's going to be a change is that. And it's not just a little dab is going to do you it it's got to be an overwhelming change. Big change on the deer side requires big change on the habitat side and I don't think doing it near enough to cause a big change. It's hard it's a lot of work but that that you gotta recognize that's just the way it is back there is no quick fix there's no product no spray there's no pouring it out it habitat producing food and the number of being appropriate consuming the amount of that's available. That's it. All the variation that we see across the States eastern United States is based on We got a temperature relationship heat heat dissipation that's never going to can't do anything about that. You know deer on the the Gulf Coast of and Alabama no matter how well you manage it, never going to be as big as deer from that's physics. That's never going to change but when you remove that variable of temperature latitude else that we see with deer and the variation in body size antler size is based on food plain and simple.

Bonner Powell: 30:46

And there are ways to facilitate dough harvest and I, you know, I'd like for y'all to talk about those just a bit facilitate dough harvest, make it fun, take a little bit of stress off of yourself if you're one of the only people hunting the property that kind of thing I get all the time harvest early harvest late you know should I kill my does first part of the season? Should I kill them after the post-rut, you know, all of that what do I do with my deer? All of these are questions that we get all the time I do you have any common answers for those Bronson just give people off the cuff?

Dr. Bronson Strickland: 31:24

Yeah I I would say one of the biggest ones first of all if you if you have a it really on are you chasing a particular buck? And and buddy I I get it you know people see bucks they want to harvest bucks I totally understand that but let's not devote the entire season to that and neglect the maintenance of of that population. So it could be very simple I mean that there's there could be a hundred ways to do this. It could be that really put pressure on your bow hunters on your property wear out those with the opportunities you have then and even change of philosophy like this a lot of people look for opening day of youth muzzle odor rifle season in the South as that's going to be a good day for some bucks to hit the ground and good opportunity. What a wonderful opportunity dough are not to so many people on the property you might be able to knock out 50% of your dough harvest the opening weekend of rifle season in two or days. Yeah take advantage of that.

Bonner Powell: 32:35

A couple dough days are fantastic get buddies together know eat good food shoot some dough hang out you know beverages in the evening that's right yeah I just there's a there's a lot of ways to make it easier at and I you know a lot of people early late discussion for me my typical answer is you know I'd I'd rather get them but at the same time it doesn't matter just get it done one way or another. You know it's kind of like you know should I do my chores you know I've got to do a certain number of things over the you know over the fall time for my wife to be happy with me so that she knows I got my chores done. Should I do them early or should I do them late? It doesn't really matter because I got to get them all You know so at a certain point, you know, just get it done shoot the dose and reach your harvest goals and I have fun doing it. I mean there's plenty of ways to donate deer whether it's people just down the road you mentioned the hungry people earlier Bronson if you don't know any of the hungry there's definitely ways that you can donate deer to get those two people that are in need. And I mean man what better way to have a good time hang out with your buddies kill a bunch of does and then at the end of it I get to have this warm fuzzy feeling because I'm going to give a lot of this meat to people that need it that people that don't have you know I love you know service in the community and everything but maybe I'm not you know as outgoing enough to go out and just different people and help different people that are in but I can definitely shoot a couple extra dough and you know donate those. Absolutely.

Moriah Boggess: 34:21

I'm all for the early harvest or whatever makes somebody but I there's there's also some questions dough harvest that you hear that's like should you try to shoot old does or young does should you shoot them or late some people feel really strongly or or bad I know if this is like a they feel this in a moral sense or what but they feel bad that if they shoot one late they're killing the fetuses too. But from a deer management perspective that really matter that deer would have been bred you can shoot early she would have been bred or you can shoot her late after she's bred there's really no population But at the end of the day there's a lot of questions deer harvest and I think all of us probably enjoy through those as deer nuts and you know we can all o stuff you know I think we're all guilty of that at point just because that's what the world we live in. But for the average landowner whenever those questions come up my thought process and sometimes response is I'm always at least thinking that question, that level of analyzation of how we harvest dough the when, the all that is so far beyond the higher priority of simply doing it just to put a you know a different way is that that's we're not near you in most cases we're not to point where we even need to be worrying about having discussion because we would have to be having a of harvest that is shooting enough doughs before we to say, okay, now we can sit back with our cold beverage at night and really break down how we're doing this and overanalyze and all and that is fun. But I I think that analysis by paralysis sometimes gets people with the dough harvest thing. And maybe maybe we're just looking for excuses right we just want to want to think and talk more than we act but in most cases it's just not necessary to think it.

Bonner Powell: 36:28

Yeah definitely more people need to have the you know the Nike mentality just do it you know get it done you know but I don't know I don't know how you really address with people that don't think dough harvest is I mean it's just really really tough.

Dr. Bronson Strickland: 36:48

Well I I think it can be certainly property the composition of the hunters and are know is it a big bow hunting property rifle property but but let's also keep this in mind to people that that listen to the stuff we and like us talk about and we we have all this now for huntability of a property and and hunting pressure and how that changes buck behavior. People have heard that and have seen that and that and so they're trying to reconcile you know Mariah I hear you we we want to do this but the same time I also heard you on the other talk about the disturbance and hunting pressure and and and changing behavior. And so I think that's again where you have to out cost benefit short term this year, long years from now and this is one way. There's a bunch of ways to do it. You know but the the reason I talked about like opening weekend a rifle season is let's have event let's let's make it an acute event versus chronic you know disturbance like that. So let's have that big effort let's go ahead out 5060 whatever percent of the does we need kill and then what I like and I'm biased here and what I like but you know we're the also looking at the numbers on the harvest sheet if you don't get it all done then I actually like that closing weekend of deer season, gun whatever, is to also kill some more then because as y'all know, what a wonderful time to carcass condition at the end of deer season. So now that is informing us more accurately on this relationship that we're talking Do we have enough food on the property or not? For us in Mississippi that's going to be the, know, January 31st is going to close. So that is going to be our last data point getting on what is their body size, do they have fat on their carcass, et cetera, that we miss if we just shot all of our does on 15th. So I think of getting most of it done bow opening week in a gun season and I'm all for you. You want to sit back and we want to hunt the We don't want to be shooting does off plots, that, and the other rut great. Wonderful. You know, in our context in the South then you might have anywhere from four weeks to eight where you don't need to concentrate as much on dough harvest. But then don't have the issue that a lot of do burnout. I killed all those does I've already got three in the freezer I've been buck hunting you it's like a lot of turkey hunters go, my gosh I cannot wait until turkey season's over because I'm ready to sleep in one day. People get fatigued you know but hunting in a and a long deer season but don't neglect that towards the end of the season To harvest more that helps you fill your quota. It's also very influential with us looking at and being able to interpret what's going on your deer population. So that there's a lot of opportunity to get done.

Bonner Powell: 40:16

So what you're saying is, Bronson, you really like to the opening weekend of deer season and the closing of deer season.

Dr. Bronson Strickland: 40:25

I want to be at that skin and shed. Yeah. At both those times.

Moriah Boggess: 40:32

I'll play devil's advocate for a second, and this is you and I might differ a little bit, Bronson. I think having some at late season is important, but I've seen so many people put it off. They put they'll put off 50% or more of their harvest to that last weekend. And then almost always in that situation, they just make it. And then it's always, well, we'll do better next And then the next year comes around. They got some really nice bucks on camera. They're kind of shy with their dough harvest. They put it off again, and it's this never-ending What you said there, if they falled it to a T, I think they would achieve it because they would knock out most of theirs on the opening weekend of Rifle. But I've I've I've been burned before uh working with that say, yeah, we'll do that, and then they get to end and it doesn't happen. And then I'm sitting there.

Dr. Bronson Strickland: 41:20

Mariah, I'm just saying what should be done. I'm not saying what's gonna be done.

Moriah Boggess: 41:24

Oh yeah. I'm playing it the other way. I'm like, I know what's gonna happen if we do it this So yeah, putting it off sometimes can come back to bite you in the butt.

Bonner Powell: 41:35

Yeah, and just, you know, just for you know, any that are like, well, I I don't I don't think this really applies to me. You know, there are areas of states, areas across the that have extremely low deer densities, and maybe, maybe you're in an area where, you know, you need to put off harvest or, you know, not harvest as many. I think it's important that we say that just kind of, you know, we we're painted with a broad brush because most of the areas across the southeast have too many deer. But I know I've worked in areas where I was like, like they really, like, you know, we couldn't get harvest data because they couldn't kill enough deer. And then you start looking at observation data and like, my gosh, like they're seeing a deer per four Like there there are some places where there just aren't any deer, but if you're trying to talk yourself into one of those people, you're not. You're not. You either know or you don't. But I I, you know, I do think it's important that we do say that, just that there are some areas across the that are not eat up with deer.

Dr. Bronson Strickland: 42:45

I I'm glad you brought that up because it does depend, as irritating as people find that But that that's a good example of qualifying Every place is not the same. And they're absolutely, even in the southeast, even in Mississippi, there are places where don't need to stand on the deer population. Yeah. A few a few doughs may be completely adequate. There may be even be situations they don't need to have a dough harvest. But but that it is so context specific. Yeah.

Moriah Boggess: 43:21

Well. Okay. Till next time on the dough harvest. I think there's more we can probably add to that in breaking down the why in the future. It's a big topic. That's right.

Dr. Bronson Strickland: 43:36

But but it is it is critically important. That again, I'll say it again. Peep people roll their eyes and they get tired of hearing a deer biologist talk about dough I know. But the reason deer biologists always talk dough harvests is because it is so

Moriah Boggess: 43:53

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