Quality Deer Management can help produce healthier deer, more fawns, heavier deer body weights, more mature bucks, more rut activity, larger antlers, and other benefits. To achieve these goals, you need to have a grasp on the current health of the herd and whether it’s on course to get where you want it to go.
Data collection is key to knowing what you’re working with so you can set a starting point for your goals. Here are five simple but important types of information you can collect during the hunting season to help you achieve better deer and better deer hunting.
Observation Data
All hunters should record sightings of deer each time they hunt and separate them out by doe, fawn and buck. Deer that can’t be confidently placed in one of these groups should be listed as “unidentified.” Other sightings you want to track, such as predators or feral hogs, could also be recorded at this time.
Additional information for each sighting should include date of the hunt, location hunted, and total hours hunted. At the end of the season, total the sightings and the number of hours hunted, then calculate all sightings in a “per hour” rate, such as “does seen per hour,” or “bucks seen per hour.” These sighting rates can be tracked within or across seasons to follow trends and can also help in determining how many does should be harvested each season to better balance the herd.
Also, calculate the fawns-per-doe sighting rate by dividing the total number of fawns by the total number of does sighted. This is important to track so you can determine the number of fawns surviving and being recruited into the fall herd.
If hunters in a club or cooperative are sensitive about sharing their sightings for particular stand locations, keep the location or hunter anonymous in your data, or set up a locked drop box where data cards can be dropped at the end of each hunt. Keep the box locked until the end of the season when you calculate your sighting rates.
Trail camera surveys before season or even during season can also be a nice supplement to your observation data from the stand. This basic trail camera survey computation form can help you analyze all those pictures to determine approximate buck:doe ratios, fawn recruitment, deer per acre or deer per square mile to help you understand the herd dynamics to be able to set your deer management goals better.
Weight
After you’ve harvested a deer, there are several items of information to gather, starting with weight. Record the weight of every deer harvested. Get both dressed and live weights for every deer if it’s possible or choose one or the other and stay consistent throughout the season with the one you choose.
Along with each deer’s weight, record the deer’s sex and other information in a single location for later analysis. You can then track improvements in average body weight for specific groups of deer, such as adult does or specific age classes of bucks.
Age
Pull a lower jawbone from every deer harvested, both bucks and does. This will help you assign an estimated age to each deer. Label or tag each jawbone with a number or unique ID that will help you match the jawbone to the weight and sex of the deer recorded in your logbook. You can save the jawbones for after the season and have them aged by your nearest state wildlife agency biologist, or you can learn how to estimate jawbone age yourself by watching our how-to video.
You could also send in the middle two incisor teeth for cementum annuli aging to DeerAge.com and then compare your jawbone age estimate to the results of the cementum aging test to get a better idea of the deer’s age and to help you in becoming a better deer aging expert!
Kidney Fat
What percentage of the kidneys were covered with fat? This is an index of deer health; the more fat covering the kidneys, the healthier the deer. You can check this two different ways:
- Take a quick glance and if you can barely recognize or locate the kidneys because they are encased in deep globs of fat, that’s a great sign of a healthy deer! On the other hand, if the kidneys are naked or only sparsely covered in fat, that deer is not in great health or prepared for winter. If this is a common diagnosis among deer harvested in your area, take more does, and improve the habitat.
- Go the extra mile by weighing the kidneys (fat and all) and then take the kidneys out of the encased fat and just weigh them and do a little math and you can see just how much fat is on them and keep a record of those weights each year to see the trends and see if they are getting heavier or lighter. Here’s a more detailed look at how to analyze kidney fat as an index of herd health.
Antler Dimensions
Record antler measurements (beam length, spread, mass and tine length) from every buck harvested. Combined with age data you collect from the jawbone or cementum aging, you can track improvements in antler size by age class over time. As habitat quality, buck:doe ratio and other factors improve, you will see an improvement in average antler size by age class.
*Honorable Mention* – Doe Lactation Status
Check every doe harvested before the peak of the rut to see if it has milk in its udder. If it does, it likely had a fawn that survived that year. Record “yes” or “no” for lactation for each doe harvested. This helps you track fawn recruitment.
*Honorable Mention* – Breeding Date
When field-dressing a doe, especially later in the season, you might find one or more fetuses in the reproductive tract. If so, you can backdate the age of the fetus using a fetus scale to determine the date the doe was bred. Gather enough of these dates and you can pinpoint the timing of your local rut peak.
Conclusion
Collecting these types of data will only take you a few extra moments while you’re hunting or while you’re field-dressing and skinning your harvest. It helps to have a location setup for data collection before you head out to hunt and harvest a deer. Stock the location with scales, gambrel, and other tools and record-keeping materials needed. The more convenient you can make it to record the information, the more likely all hunters involved in your management efforts will participate in the data-collection task.
The information you gather with a little extra effort allows you to adjust your harvest goals and habitat efforts to meet the changing needs of the deer herd across seasons and years. The result will be healthier deer and more exciting hunting in seasons to come!