So I started out working to see the range that animals progress through as they grow to their maximum potential. So I needed to figure out how low they started at. So I picked a group of mule deer, and culled all the males. As soon as they respawned, I culled them for their data, since these were fresh respawns. I started to notice that no matter how many animals that I harvested in a year from that herd, they all respawned on the same day, at a periodicity of 3. Then I tried this for whitetail deer. They had the exact same pattern. With a little more testing I was very comfortable that animals respawned on the first day of a new year on the map. This was later confirmed by the devs.

I have mostly harvested males. When harvesting males, the respawns did not have a change to the number of males in the herd or the male to female ratio. If you harvest females and males, does this change? Is it random or a defined mechanic? I would like to test it a bit at some point.

This is a link to a Bumblewoot doing some sciencing in a stream. I love to hear other people trying to figure things out.

Science Live – Does harvesting doe effect respawn population? – Way of the Hunter – YouTube

Here is a follow up Bumblewoot video that had some more summary of how that experiment went. I find it interesting that he saw that the effects of harvesting alot of females did impact multiple herds, and did not just revert back after a year or two.