Maybe someone on here smarter than I could tell me what the stats would be for mature deer in a heard. So let's say there are 1000 deer in an area, what percentage of that heard would likely be deer over 3 years old? I'm just curious as to how bad I'm limiting myself since I won't shoot anything younger than that.

I read an article years ago by Dr James Kroll "Dr Deer" that was very informative. The study was on buck's making it to maturity in an UN-HUNTED area.

My memory isn't what it once was but I believe my stats are close... The rut along with Mother Nature is hard on bucks.

- A buck had like a 35% chance of having a third birthday. - A buck had less than a 5% chance of having a sixth birthday.

Interesting question.

On private land thats managed its gonna be much higher than public obviously.

On public its gonna vary according to the size of the herd,harvest rates,hunting pressure and antler restrictions etc.

Not aware of any empirical studies regarding your question

herd not heard

Penn State has done extensive stuidies on whitetail deer, you can probably find many of their findings on the net. Much of it depends on pressure directly affecting the deer herds.

"On private land that's managed its gonna be much higher than public obviously"

Even that is going to be up to interpretation. Most private land is less than 100 acres so even if an owner tries to practice QDM the odds are the neighbor doesn't so it's a pretty wasted effort.

Don't forget road kills. That gets alot of them too. Its hard for a male deer to make it 3 years.

I have a neighbor doctor who has bought up a lot of land around me, and anyone hunting his property has to follow his rules, and not shoot any little bucks. I think this has helped my hunting on my property, some. But there's still a lot of small tracks that get hunted hard, and those deer don't stay on his property all of the time.

I do think that if a deer makes it to 4 or older, you will probably not catch him in the usual places that the smaller deer frequent. You probably need to hunt him differently.

Here's an interesting study on one buck in Pennsylvania.

https://www.deer.psu.edu/we-spied-on-him-for-3-years/

I recall some years ago — maybe 20 or so — NYS had determined that about 90% of each year’s cohort of 1.5 YO bucks were killed by the end of that year’s seasons.

If half of the 2.5s are killed, that should take a buck’s chances of making it to 3.5 down to about 5%… Pretty sure those were statewide numbers…

If you have access to good Private, your odds are better; if you live in a state with minimal public land and where very little Private gets hunted, they’re probably better still. When I had access to a VERY nice patch of Private with hunted properties pretty much all around, 2.5s were not uncommon, but 3.5s were…

So that’s a tall order you’ve set for yourself, but if it makes you happy, you’re not doing it Wrong…

Here is a link that provides an immense amount of information about a given year's harvest data in KY.

I've attached one piece of data showing the number of 2.5+ old deer harvested in 2022 in KY. Note the statewide percent of bucks 2.5+ years old is about 80%. Yearlings were about 20%. Before the statewide one buck/hunter rule was instituted in 1992 these numbers were flip-flopped.

forgot the link

https://fw.ky.gov/Hunt/Pages/Deer-Hunting-Stats.aspx

There's also state by state and regions in each state...I don't think you can get a solid answer if ya lump it al together. The Northern tier of my state has way less Deer than the Southern. Wolves and other predators are more populated in the Northern half. Studies are very deceiving.

Where I am, I'd venture to say less than 2% overall. Folks don't let em walk. Don't get me wrong, I'll never fault a guy for putting food on the table, but a lot of people don't know how much they grow between 4 and 6 years. Even the ones trying to do "management" on private land are missing out by culling bucks that don't meet their standards by the 3 year mark. One of the places I hunt decided to do an experiment and not shoot bucks until they get sway-backed and low-hanging bellies...the results have been eye-opening. A lot of nice deer running around that place now.

Definitely a huge difference between public lands and large parcels of controlled-access private lands. A guy I know has 400 acres in SW Michigan that he carefully manages his food plots and hunter access. He passed up a number of pretty 10 pointers last fall because his trail cams were showing noticeably bigger bucks moving at night. I told him I am only going to shoot old does and really ugly young bucks. He sends me the pics of the ones that grow really strange racks. This month he had two 1.5 y.o.s with nearly identical really ugly forkhorns. They both dropped their right antler first and the pic of those two with only one very ugly left antler made me chuckle. Like 'those guys' in a bar who will never get a girl to dance with them.

I wonder how it differs for deer out West in bigger, mountainous country that are migratory and have a larger range?

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