Cow/doe hunting

[Focus]

I agree completely as if I could go back early in my career I think I would have focused on doe/cow hunts more and been able to hunt some really neat areas as opposed to going primarily the bull/buck route. Then I would have preferred to have a less desirable tag that included horns and now I find myself looking for good cow/doe opportunities on WIHA and looking at freezers to store the meat. The more I learn about food at the supermarket the more I hunt and spend time in the garden.

There will be more and more "meat" hunting programs in the future as we are already seeing many mainstream shows on Discovery, Animal Planet, TLC, etc show hunting from a food perspective as opposed to pretty much all hunting shows which are trophy based. I think this is a good thing and will help animal managers having new types of hunters interested in small game and meat hunting for big game as opposed to another guy in a jacked up truck with lots of stickers, carries a 6.5 creed hot, who dreams of a tag in Arizona or Utah and measures success in inches and shot yardage. We need more guys interested in rabbits and venison IMO.

I agree with you PH about the meat-hunting shows. One of the things that struck me about the Born and Raised Outdoors "Land of the Free" series was how for the most part they were just trying to fill tags and fill the freezer. Granted, they were all trying to shoot a bull since that's the tags they had in their pockets, but they weren't fixated on size (at least most of them weren't). It was refreshing seeing a show where the guys were just out there doing what I do.....just trying to fill the tag and fill the freezer.

 

[Rzrbck918]

Shooting mulie does can be problematic, depending on habitat and mortality, as they do not reproduce like white-tailed deer do. Killing lots of does is the best thing that you can do for a white-tail population. My observations here in this good habitat, is that a young doe will have a single fawn as her first. After that, they usually have twins and many times they have triplets here.

That is the reason that I always have summertime deer meat in my freezer thanks to depredation permits. There were over 100 deer killed this year within probably three air miles of my house, counting the 20 that we shot last summer. Great habitat makes for a rat-like reproduction rate on them.

A friend of mine made the statement that he, "would not shoot anything with tits". I had a few choice words for that, but then again, he does not eat the meat, so whatever floats his boat!:W:

Is it food/habitat limitations that affect mule deer reproduction rates or is it mostly depredation?