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

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