Norwegianwoods I might only add that the most efficient way of culling animals is to remove the females. Also you have to be very very careful removing immature males, as a culling tool, as it upsets you buck to doe ratios. That's why for every buck we kill we have to remove 2 does. You also have to understand that buck mortality rates are much higher. That's a key point many forget. The stress of the rut, fighting, vehicle accidents, etc effects bucks and mainly young bucks the hardest.
The way I've been taught and the biologists have pounded in my head is simply you dont shoot immature animals period. Am I saying its the end of the universe if one immature animal is taken, no I am not. I'm simply saying either your serious about conservation or your not. Also I have to agree with Simon on that from the pictures the land owner has posted of the piles of kudu, the bulk of what I see are immature animals. Now, it's not my property and it doesn't effect me one bit so not a whole lot I have a right to say about it other than my original statement of that your either serious about conservation or your not. It's sad that far too many people cave on proper management plans all in the name of the all mighty dollar.
I agree if your goal is to reduce the herd, then removing females is the most efficient method and I don't buy any claims of reducing the male population as a management tool to reduce the population when trophy hunting is your main goal.
I don't know enough about whitetails to say anything for sure about them, but I have rather much knowledge about Roe deer, Fallow deer and Red deer.
One of the reasons why you mainly have a high fatality rate of young bucks to vehicle accidents is exactly the high number of bucks in general and specially a high number of young bucks in any given area.
This high density will most of the time result in many of the young bucks running around looking for "greener" pastures and they will then often fall victims of a vehicle accident.
Does accept much higher densities among them than bucks do.
I have after many years of experience learned that it is possible to reduce the number of road kills by a lot if you shoot some button bucks and some young bucks to reduce the number of young bucks in an area as the reduced buck density most of the time results in them looking for "greener" pastures much less.
This is also the best way to manage your hunting area if your main focus is to get as much meat in the freezer as possible and still hunt in a sustainable way.
When a buck to doe ratio is talked about, it is very often about managing your property/area for trophies first and foremost.
And when most people talk about the quality of the herd, they most of the time mean the trophy quality of the bucks.
It doesn't take that many bucks to breed the does in any given population.
Specially with deer species that are not very territorial.
Even when it comes to Roe deer that are extremely territorial, it doesn't take lots of bucks to breed the does in any given area.
The buck to doe ratio needs to be extremely out of wack to result in not all does being bred.
What a good buck to doe ratio translates to from a trophy management/hunting point of view, is often these 2 reasons.
The main reason is that your area can only sustain a maximum amount of deer, or both the health and quality of the animals will suffer.
If your focus is having as many trophy bucks as possible, you will need to keep the doe numbers down to sustain a good number of bucks.
Another reason is to have a good chance of tagging a trophy buck, you both want as many trophy bucks as possible in the area, but you also want as many of them as possible visible during the rut.
If you have plenty of does for all the bucks, the bucks will most of the time be hung up with a doe and they will not need to cruise a lot around to find does ready to breed as the competition is not so fierce.
So you want the bucks to spend a lot of time trying to find does that are not occupied with another buck and ready to breed, as this will highly increase your odds of tagging a big one.
When it comes to Kudu, that this thread really was about, I know even way less than I do about whitetails