ORIGINAL: ghemry
It's amazing how much proof on this site alone has piled up showing that simply passing on some bucks makes it EASIER to not only see them but kill them as well.........It is a mystery why so many "trophy" hunters still cling to the lies about it being about the "challenge" of mature deer and so on Logic dictates that a true "trophy" hunter that enjoys the difficulty and challenge of finding and killing that rarest of the rare buck would get more satisfaction out of making that chore harder......not easier.
Weird.............BTW I am not talking about you rybo.
Your exactly correct, I see more bigger deer, but now the challenge comes in scounting a certain buck and trying to get that buck. Although I shot a nice 10 last year I was not hunting that buck. I have been hunting an eight point for the last two seanson's and he has won. That is where the challenge is for me. When you do get a balance herd the rut is just amazing, I love to watch rut fire up. There are a lot of plus to QDM, for some reason some folks just focus on "You just want to shoot big bucks". Yes I do, because I have shot a pile of little one's. If I want meat I will shoot a doe. Please let me know any hunter who does not like to see and shoot big deer.
If I was at my cabin(Northern MI) the challenge is just getting a shot at a whitetail(mature no fawns), it is a whole differenet ball game. I tell people and I will tell you shooting a whitetail on public ground is one of the hardest things to do. It is much easier on my farm, just like it is easier in Iowa and Kansas due to hunting pressure. We(MI) have more hunting pressure than other midwest states. I am not bitter or jealous, no one said deer hunting was fair.
ghemry, I don't think that his statement is exactly correct. While passing on young bucks should produce older deer, older deer = bigger deer and older, bigger deer have bigger antlers, a side benifit of QDM. Older deer are harder to kill. The more seasons one survives, the harder they are to kill. The only way it would get easier to kill an older deer is to have more of them. Still older deer are much harder to kill. Why do you think the P & Y minimum is much lower than the B & C minimum? Because older deer are harder to get close to with a bow. What is the percent chance of a person killing a P & Y buck? Quite small isn't it? Therefore, I believe that by balancing the age structure of the herd and producing more mature bucks, dosen't necessarily make it any easier to kill one. I agree with you that when the age structure is in better balance, it makes for one heck of an exciting rut! I hear some of these guys say they've shot their share of P & Y bucks. How many is that? Were they all shot with a bow? There is a difference. Some, may not have ever shot one, so they don't really know what it is like to hunt and kill mature bucks on a consistant basis.