Is the Indiana 1 buck rule helping?

[phishook]

I' ve heard from several bow hunters around here, that they have been seeing larger bucks and more bucks this year.

Could the 1 buck rule be working already?

[Deleted User]

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[Indianahick]

Yup we here in Indiana have really shown a lot of progress here in the Buck limit. We have progressed all the way back to the 1970' s. And no I am not really saying that you should be able to take all of the bucks that you want but I do believe that you should be allowed one with a bow and one with a firearm. The main problem is that some uncouth deer killers believed that they could take a buck for each firearm and for each archery product and from what I overheard a lot of them were only useing one firearm and just buying liceanse for the one that they used to tag with. Some were shooting 5-7 bucks a year and that was not right either. Somewhere inbetween there has to be a compromise and I personally like one with archery equipment and one with firearms (all inclusive).
J M O.

[phishook]

that was the other thing I was going to bring up, poching.

Between the price double for a tag, and the 1 buck, it' s not hard to believe that the poaching numbers will go up.

[Indianahick]

Phis- One of the best things that the DNR or whoever here started was the bonus tags for antlerless in the mid 90' s. Since its inception the first deer that I have tagged and usually the last has been a doe. Better eating; there have been several years that does is all that I have tagged.
As for poaching I can tell you an area here in southwest Vigo county that was hunted untill around 98-99 and then closed down completely by the electric company that owns the property. They will not even let the farmers give permission for hunting. The only ones getting any deer from this area are poachers and I would almost bet that there have been some monsterous bucks taken. I know that there have been several 180-220 lbs bucks taken from that area. And this was when you could only take a buck.
I have only seen one buck in the last 4 years and it was nontipical on one side that went straight out and all of the tines kind of folded down on itself. really ugly.

In case you have not already guessed I am primarily a meat hunter and not an antler hunter. Antlers are nice to me but not the main reason to hunt. Although when I do get a buck I do keep its antlers and mount them on a placque. Since bucks all I get are trophies they do not have to be poop and yuck for me.

[Horseshoer76]

i think it is starting to help but will take time to realy tell

[Honna]

I think it is helping but I dont like it because i got a lot of big deer around my house.

[Deleted User]

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[bigmac_75]

I don' t know if it is helping at all. I doubt it. I mean in any one area how many people were killing 2 bucks a year on a regular basis. Sure there is always a few people in the area that stack em up but the overall percentage of hunters that were taking 2 antlered deer per year was very small to begin with. In fact the harvest figures from last year displayed no change in the amout of antlered deer harvested from the previous 10 years.

IN has been a producer of big bucks for a long time and is in the top 10 in one of the record keeping orgs (I don' t keep track of those things either) but don' t give this bogus rule any credit for more or bigger bucks. Hopefully in another few years we will get back to the old rule but I doubt it. There are individuals that pushed for this and want even stricter regulations such as point restrictions, spread restrictions and the such. I just want to hunt, no debating if that buck has enough points or wide enough spread.

[Roger46982]

A definite YES. I' ve seen more and better bucks this season{bow} than since back in the early 70' s when pressure was low and the bucks had a chance to get mature!!!!!!