I've taken yearling when I was in college and desperate for meat. One problem, ain't a lot of meat there, but I didn't frown on it when I needed it. I didn't make a lot of money back then and had to supplement my diet with game and fish, which I do now more for sport than necessity. I don't shoot the little ones, would rather shoot a mature doe, or a legal buck. Most of the deer I've taken have been bucks, some fairly nice for where I was hunting. On my other place, I've taken nothing, but bucks, never took a doe. The buck/doe ratio is skewed toward the bucks there, seems to always have been since I bought the place in 1988. It's a 5 deer county, 3 bucks, two doe.
Here, you can only take a doe during bow season or with a special doe permit. I think this has caused the buck/doe ratio to go WAY wonky over the years. You can only get a doe permit if you have 50 or more acres. Few here have that much land, not at 10K per acre.
It's all split up in 10-20 acre tracts. There's a Wildlife Management Association here that gives out doe permits. It was formed specifically BECAUSE there's so many small tracts in the county, hard to manage. But, IMHO, the county should drop the no doe policy during gun season. It's wreaking havoc to the buck/doe ratio. But, these things tend to be controlled by politicians, not game management.
There is a 13" minimum spread on bucks here, too. That seems to work fairly well as there are some good bucks around here and I've shot a couple of legal bucks already, only been here 5 years. You can also take a spike legally which I did the first year I was here. That was some good meat, too.
