Quality
Deer Management can help you 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 see where the herd has come from
and whether it’s on course to get where you want it to go. Here are seven
simple but important types of information you can collect during the hunting
season to help you achieve better deer and better deer hunting.
1. Observation Data: All
hunters record sightings of deer each time they hunt, separated 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, should also be recorded. Additional information 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. 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.
By the
way, if hunters 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.
2. Weight. After you've killed a deer, there are several items of information to gather,
starting with weight. Record the weight of every deer you harvest. Get both
dressed and live weights for every deer if it’s possible, or choose one or the
other and gather it for all deer harvested. Record each deer's weight along
with its 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.
3. Jawbone Age. Pull a lower jawbone from every deer you
harvest, 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 series.
QDMA has produced harvest data tags that can be attached to each jawbone for ID
purposes, and the tags include space for other data like weight and sex.
4. 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.
More about this technique and what the results mean will be found in a separate article on
our site.
5. Breeding Date. When
field-dressing a doe, did you find one ore more fetuses in the reproductive
tract? If so, you can back-date the age of the fetus to determine the date the
doe was bred. Gather enough of these dates and you can pinpoint the timing of
your local rut peak. QDMA sells a tool for this measurement. You’ll
find more details on this technique in a separate article on our site.
6. 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. Here’s a
more detailed look at how to analyze kidney fat as an index of herd health.
7. Antler Dimensions. Record
antler measurements (beam length, spread, mass and tine length) from every
buck. Combined with age data from the jawbone, 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.
As you
can see, collecting these seven 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 set up for data collection before you kill
a deer. Stock the location with scales, gambrel, and other tools and
record-keeping materials you’ll need. The more convenient you make it to record
the information, the more likely all hunters involved in your effort 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 whitetails
across seasons and years. The result will be better deer and more exciting
hunting in seasons to come! Goodhunting!
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