I hunt at the lake sparingly. 125 miles north at a friends Red River County farm we shoot doe tags as permitted by the State Biologists to balance the sex ratio of does to bucks. My friend up there usually has 30 doe and 10 buck tags for his 120 acres. We never shoot them all or even get close no matter how many guests and kids we take along. Part of the permit process is data gathering on the age of the does. We are shooting the largest does out of any group and they average 2 1/2 years old when we take them. At the lakehouse here, the does are never hunted. There aren't any doe tags in Smith County. The does I regularly see on cam are long faced, long bodied does with deep chests and developed hindquarters. They must be the maximum age for wild whitetail does in the state. Range conditions are optimal and there isn't any hunting pressure. Usually they have twins.
When I was a kid, we didn't HAVE deer in Smith County. The first time we found a hoofprint in the mud at the lake spillway it was like finding Bigfoot. We raced back to the lakehouse and announced it and even the adults come down to look.
Now there are so many deer that they are being killed on the highway and seen in town. Nice to have them back.
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