Ask ten deer hunters how many does should you shoot each year and you’ll get ten different answers. Some will tell you to shoot every doe you see. Others will warn you that you’re one bad season away from wiping out your herd. The truth, as usual, lives somewhere in between—and it depends on your land, your neighbors, your goals, and how honest you’re willing to be about what your property is actually producing.
To get past the campfire opinions and into something more useful, we sat down with Dr. Bronson Strickland of Wildlife Investments, a longtime deer biologist and consultant, and Justin Ballard of Paragon Aerial Solutions. Together, they approach the problem from different angles—one rooted in population biology and habitat management, the other in real-time data collected from aerial drone surveys—but they arrive at the same conclusion: there is no single number that works everywhere.
That’s because doe harvest isn’t a simple math problem, even though it’s often treated like one. As Strickland explains, focusing on formulas and ratios can miss the bigger picture entirely.
“I wish there was a formula,” Strickland said. “I wish it was just simple arithmetic. But the bottom line is, are you producing the quality of deer that you’re satisfied with?”
That question, he says, is where everything begins. Doe harvest isn’t just about reducing numbers. It’s about deer condition, habitat pressure, and ultimately buck quality.
“We talk a lot about doe harvest,” Strickland said, “but doe harvest and doe condition is directly related to buck condition. There’s a statistically significant relationship between average doe body weight and buck antler size on a property. We often use doe body weight and doe condition as a surrogate for where we’re at with buck quality.”
In other words, if your does are struggling, your bucks are too — even if they’re reaching the age classes you want.
Starting With Reality, Not a Number
One of the most common mistakes landowners make is trying to calculate an exact deer density, especially on smaller properties. Strickland says that impulse makes sense, but it’s often misplaced.
“People like me really love a number,” he said. “That’s the way our brain works. But on small properties, I don’t think you need to do that. The population is just spending a little bit of time on your property. It’s not realistic to say the deer density on my 250 acres is this, because what really affects deer quality is the 5,000 acres around you.”
Instead, he encourages landowners to read the deer and the habitat honestly.
“If you’re getting bucks into the three- and four-year-old age class and you don’t have high-quality bucks, something’s wrong,” Strickland said. “Either you’ve got a harvesting issue, or you’re in a food-limited environment. And that uniformly affects all the deer, bucks and does.”
That’s when doe harvest needs to increase, even if it feels uncomfortable.
“If you’re not satisfied with buck quality and you’re harvesting very few does,” he said, “very simply, you ought to harvest more.”
The Forage Side of the Equation
At the heart of doe harvest is forage. “You can have enough biomass to sustain a very dense population,” Strickland explained, “but not enough to get to that next level of improving quality. You’ve got enough maintenance food for does to reproduce and fawns to survive, but not enough for deer to really express their potential.”
That’s why habitat work alone often fails if it isn’t paired with harvest.
“What happens a lot,” he said, “is people add food to the system and back off doe harvest because they think they’ve addressed the problem. But one or two years later, they’ve stimulated reproduction even more, and now they’re right back where they started.”
The result is the same pressure, just with more deer.
“You didn’t fix the problem,” Strickland said. “You grew the population.”
Removing Mouths vs. Adding Food
In the Deep South, late summer is a nutritional bottleneck. Addressing it can produce dramatic improvements, but only if deer numbers are controlled.
“I’ve seen hunting clubs go from scraping for fat at the skinning shed to not being able to see meat on the rump in two years,” Strickland said. “But those examples worked because they were already harvesting enough does. They added food on top of good population control.”
If adding food isn’t feasible, the solution is even simpler.
“If you can’t add food,” he said, “then you need to remove mouths. Go at it that way.”
Knowing What You Actually Have
This is where technology enters the picture. Justin Ballard with Paragon Aerial Solutions approaches deer management from a different angle: counting what’s actually on the ground.
“You either see them or you don’t,” Ballard said. “With thermal, there’s a heat signature there or there’s not. It’s undeniable.”
Paragon uses multiple drones flown simultaneously to avoid double-counting and to cover properties quickly.
“We’re flying three, four, sometimes five drones at a time,” Ballard said. “Each pilot has a specific grid. We’re covering the property as fast as possible so deer don’t have time to move between areas.”
Their confidence came from repeated testing.
“We flew a 700-acre high-fence property 13 or 14 times,” he said. “It counted 105 or 106 deer every single time. That’s when we knew we had something.”
And the biggest surprise for landowners?
“Outside of high fence, people almost always think they have more deer than they do,” Ballard said. “That’s the number one thing we see.”
Buck-to-Doe Ratios and Hunting Quality
Strickland is clear that buck-to-doe ratios don’t control population growth the way many hunters think, but they absolutely affect the hunting experience.
“It’s not going to impact the population whatsoever if you’re one-to-four or one-to-one,” he said. “Fawns are still going to be born. But a more even ratio makes for a more exciting hunt.”
When ratios are skewed, the rut suffers.
“Bucks find does too easily,” Strickland said. “There’s less chasing, less competition. It’s just not as much fun.”
In most cases, a bad ratio signals misplaced pressure.
“When you see ratios that skewed,” he said, “it usually means the community has focused on shooting bucks and not enough on shooting does.”
Fawn Recruitment and Predators
Fawn recruitment adds another layer, but it’s easy to misinterpret.
“It can be difficult to disentangle,” Strickland said. “If deer condition is really good and you’re not seeing fawns, that suggests predation. If deer condition is poor and you’re not seeing fawns, that’s a resource issue.”
And sometimes predators aren’t the villain.
“If you’re in a food-restricted environment and coyotes are eating fawns,” he said, “my reply is good. They’re helping you out.”
Ballard sees the same thing from the air.
“We’ve got tons of footage of coyotes following does,” he said. “Bobcats too. But late summer, early fall, does are also really good at hiding fawns. They can be there and you just don’t see them.”
Pulling It All Together
When it comes time to make a decision, Strickland urges landowners to start conservatively and stay consistent.
“You can start with something very safe, like one doe per 100 acres,” he said. “In some places, you need to harvest well over a deer per 50 acres. That’s not detrimental — that’s necessary.”
The key is adjustment.
“Start somewhere,” he said. “Collect data. Calibrate. If deer quality doesn’t change, you need to shoot more. Just recognize that on small properties, that means you’ll see fewer deer. You’ve got to decide what makes you happy.”
Ballard sees the outcome repeatedly.
“Every high-quality property we fly has one thing in common,” he said. “They shoot a lot of does. That’s not advice, necessarily, but it’s an observation.”
Staying the Course
Doe harvest doesn’t produce instant gratification, and that’s where many programs fail—especially for landowners trying to figure out how many does should you shoot in a single season and expecting immediate results.
“It’s like going to the gym for one week and expecting a change,” Strickland said. “One year of deer management is the same way. Real results show up in years three, four, and five.”
The advice he leaves landowners with is simple.
“Be diligent,” he said. “Don’t lose confidence. This stuff works.”
