On the project I mentioned in western GA, we were working with an extremely large (14,000 acres) private property that had not been hunted in many years. Few deer alive on that property had experienced hunting pressure. The deer were "zoo deer." They wandered around in broad daylight and we would have to honk the horn to get them out of the roads so we could drive through. But because the the long period without being hunted, the population was well over capacity. Browse lines were everywhere, body weights were low even for mature deer, fawn survival was terrible, and buck antler growth per age-class the lowest I've ever seen aside from coastal deer. Peak breeding was in mid-November, but was a bit more strung out than it should have been. Almost all bucks had shed their antlers by late December, with some dropping mid-December, as soon as peak breeding was over.
Due to the long period of being unhunted, the local deer population was not suffering any of the social structure problems so common at the time. The adult sex ratio was very balanced and male/female age structures in fantastic shape. All of the problems in performance were linked to the nutritional and social stresses associated with over-population.
Although we attempted to lower the population, with such a large area and high deer density to work with, our best estimates were we only dropped the population density by about 5%. However, we VASTLY improved the habitat, which was full canopy hardwoods and pine plantations. Through timber thinning, the large-scale use of fire, and a small percentage of the property in food plots, over the next couple of years herd performance sky-rocketed. Body weights and fawn survival rose dramatically. Antler growth for mature bucks went from small stunted racks that looked like a yearling's antlers to some 150-caliber antlers. Peak breeding advanced into late October (which is what is normal for that region), and the breeding window shortened. Most interesting, bucks that had all shed by the end of December were now holding antlers until March. A few of the most mature bucks were dropping late February, but most held until March and some would still be holding antlers into the first week of April.
Experiments we conducted in Alabama with deer herd that had major social dynamics problems (low buck age structure and severe sex ratio problems), found that balancing the sex ratio, advancing the buck age structure reduced rut stress among bucks to accomplish the same thing - dramatically delaying antler drop. We saw this pattern throughout the Southeast so frequently, that we began to use antler drop timing as a pretty good anecdotal indicator of nutritional and social stresses within a local deer population.
