antleer restriction

[Buckrub]

Edge, what I have is a .PDF so I sent it to your email. Hope that's ok.

Old does sure should be first choice for meat. I agree.

In any study I've seen, with one exception, Spikes almost always do grow racks. They are almost always smaller than their brothers' racks that started life as a forked horn, but they don't remain spikes very often.

[ozark]

The numbers of deer being seen is down considerably in our area the last three years. I haven't heard why. It isn't overharvesting and I haven't heard of any desease. Same with the turkey population. It may just be the valley of the peaks and valley that occur.

[edge]

Thanks I appreciate it, it was a good read

IMO, the King study which I have not read seems to have been too short to be of much use, and they also did not seem to concentrate on removing older Does....the other half of the equation.

edge.

[10ga]

The heck with antler restrictions. The purpose of hunting is herd control and reduction. If you want trophies go hunt behind a fence like most of the "video" guys do. I don't eat antlers and hunting them is certainly your privledge but don't put the law on me for not agreeing with your philosophy. In many areas here in Virginia if you let deer walk you are outta here. I have gained lots of area to hunt by showing landowners that their lease holders were not maximizing their harvest. I have certainly been cursed by some hunters and am unwelcome in other areas but I don't lack for places to hunt and receive a warm welcome in many quarters. My nickname in the club is "no mercy". The smallest deer I've taken was 16 lb. dressed and the largest 273 dressed, both whitetails. I have taken my share of "trophies" (largest one scores 196) but it isn't because I let some walk by, they were just the 1st one to get to the killiing field. May you all have a "target rich environment" and full freezers. 10ga

[broomebuck]

10ga obviously there is an abundance of deer where you are i remember weeks with out seeing a single deer maybe you would change your tune if that was the case where you hunted

[edge]

May 20, 2009 11:14:21 GMT -5 10ga said:

The heck with antler restrictions. The purpose of hunting is herd control and reduction.

SNIP

Perhaps those are your only goals, they are not mine.
IMO, it is very easy to reduce herd size in rural areas by mandating shooting a Doe before you can shoot a Buck. Adjust the ratio until the hunters cry that there is nothing to shoot!
Believe me it does not take long at all

Fortunately I don't tell you how to hunt and you don't tell me how to hunt

edge.

[boarhog]

In my hunting area, Cleveland County, Arkansas, the 3 point rule has definitely improved the quality of bucks taken, but we still need to thin the doe population drastically. Anytime you see fawns that still have spots in mid to late November, your habitat has a bad buck to doe ratio. About 10 years back, we did one of those 3 nite spotlight surveys on our 2500 acre club. We used survey sheets and instructions form the game biologists, then sent the data to them to anylize. They told us out buck/doe ratio was 1/22 and that we should kill a minimum of 50 does and hope we didn't have a hard winter, or we could have starvation losses. That fell on deaf ears to the guys in power of the club at that time. The next season, those of us that wanted to kill does were voted down, and we only killed 32 mostly young bucks, if I remember correctly. Luckily, the owner of 1600 of our leased acres clear-cut it early enough for browse to green up well before winter. Otherwise we would have likely had few deer to hunt today.
The sad thing is, it took several deaths and bad health quits to change the status quo. We still have more rules than the State, but at least now, we are encouraged to kill old does first, and we let smaller legal bucks live another year. It has improved, but we still need to kill a lot more does.