Just finished another season of antlerless deer hunting on the National Wildlife Refuge I work on. We began hunts in 2001 when population densities were obscene (1 deer per 4 acres minimum). Buck to doe ratios were 1:14. We have taken about 100 antlerless deer per year for 5 years. Buck to doe ratio on latest spotlight count was 1:9.

Based on hunter reports, our buck to doe ratio is much better that our survey results show (believeable since we acknowledge that we can't positively identify small bucks at night at distances greater than 50 yards).

We checked several 1 1/2 year old bucks last week with both antlers broken off just above the burr - and have seen several others. We have not observed broken antlers on checked deer older then 1 1/2. Another contributing factor may be the prolonged drought we have been in...

It seems logical that more bucks might lead to more competition (sparring) yielding more broken antlers. I haven't seen any research to support this - any opinions? I don't see this as a management problem, just a curiosity.

CA has a zone G3 with only 35 tags a year Mule Deer buck to doe ratio is approx 70 to 100.

I'm afraid I don't understand your post - do you mean:

70 bucks per 100 does?
70 to 100 bucks per doe? or
70 to 100 does per buck?

Yes Acer as the ratio get lower there will be more & more competition for breeding rights. The reason you are seeing more antler damages to the young bucks is that they (the antlers) are more fragile than the older deers (in relation to body size) whacking them together. I am a Wildlife Biologist, at 1 time I had the buck:doe ratio at less that 1:1 (around .8:1) on a 10,000 acre ranch, that I manage.......everything was rosy until the rut....then you couldn't find a mature deer on the place that didn't have a busted up rack. I had to ease off on thumping does to keep my bucks from destroying their antlers before we could harvest them.