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As part of most management programs, doe harvest is an important component that needs just as much attention as trophy bucks.

Grazing lands provide forage for livestock, habitat for wildlife and recreational opportunities such as hunting. The assessed value of a ranch based on aesthetics and wildlife habitat or its recreational opportunities can often exceed the property's agricultural value.

A White-tailed Deer Seminar will be held at the Pontotoc Technology Center Auditorium at 601 West 33rd Street in Ada, Okla., from 9 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. on Sept. 25, 2004, followed by an in-depth session at the Noble Research Institute's Wildlife Unit.

For several years, advances in technology and creative thinking have led some deer researchers and managers to explore using infrared-triggered cameras over bait to monitor or estimate deer populations. It is imperfect, but it does hold a lot of promise.

If you are not satisfied with the size of bucks on your property, and your hunters are harvesting more than one buck per 300 acres of deer habitat annually, you need to impose some method of limiting buck harvest.

The Boone and Crockett score of your biggest buck? The pounds of venison you put in the freezer? The number of deer you harvested? The number of days you spent hunting? There are probably as many answers as there are hunters.

A deer management association (or coop) is simply a group of land managers in a region who share common deer management goals and make a decision to cooperatively manage their shared deer herd. Goals such as improving the buck age structure, buck:doe ratio, fawn crop, or altering deer density are difficult or impossible to achieve on small acreages without a deer fence. Developing a common strategy over larger acreages is much more effective.

Quality deer habitat includes a mixture of trees, shrubs, vines, forbs, grasses and other plants such as fungi and sedges. Certain plants within each of these categories benefit deer more than others.

Have you considered the effects on the buck population when an area is chopped up by many different landowners and infiltrated by several deer hunters who want to shoot a buck?

Among deer hunters, this is a common question each year. Answers range from subtle facts to outright hyperbole. The commonality is that most deer hunters dream of taking a big buck home or at least seeing several bucks that they can pass and allow to grow larger.