RE: Indiana one buck rule
According to the DNR folks I've spoken with at NRC meetings the last few years it's only real effect has been to pacify the Great White Hunter wannabes such as the IDHA and IBA who forced it on us. They referred to it as a "social experiment", not a biological experiment. Here are a few inconvenient facts:
1)The OBR only affects the minority, while nothing has changed for the majority.
2)More bucks have been killed the last five years than in any five years in the history of Indiana deer hunting.
3)The single biggest increase in record book entries happened the first year of the OBR, those bucks had to have been alive prior to the OBR.
Basically, a small but vocal group of deer hunters who want a booner behind every bush pressured the DNR into adopting this silly and rather useless rule because they're too lazy to do what it takes to get a real trophy animal. If there were actually a booner for everyone they wouldn't be booners anymore, now would they? I live in one of the new reduction counties(Harrison), there are way too many does down here because the focus is now on bucks instead of herd management. Most of the guys I know who took their one buck during early archery spent the rest of the season hunting something else because in their eyes their season was over. Have I seen more bucks? Not really, and the ones I've seen were still the same 1-2.5 year old bucks I've always seen. All the OBR has actually done is shift the harvest more toward the gun season, more bucks are getting shot than ever before and the doe herd is still out of control. Deer management should always be handled by the folks who are schooled and paid for doing it, not a bunch of armchair quaterbacking bubbas.
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Kevin Haendiges
NAHC Life Member
NRA Member
Wildlife Forever Member
GOA Member
Buckmasters Member
http://hunting-indiana.com
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