my family and our huntin camp hunt for meat. we dont go with "if its brown its down" cuz we pass on yearlings, but this season i was lucky enough to see 3 deer and shoot one of them. it was a 1 1/2 yr old fork horn. my first buck, and my 2nd best trophy to date, next to the picture on my desk with me posing w/ my first deer, a mature doe taken w/ my dad sitting right next to me. I said i was lucky enough to see 3 deer, thats because this past 9 day rifle season in WI we had 11 guys hunting for 7 days, and only 2 of us filled a tag, my dads buddy saw 2 does and shot one of them. we are meat hunters, if we were to pass on every deer that isnt 5 1/2 years old or 125" or better, we would not have had venison in our freezers for the past however many years since my dad started meat hunting. i liked the post about natural selection and darwins theory, thats a great thought, so maybe if you really care about managing your herd, you should get out there and tag as many of those small bucks before the rut as you can so they dont breed, and let the monsters do all the mounting, then try for em after every one of your neighbors has been pounding the woods hard for a couple months and all the bucks hole up in the thickest junk you've ever seen and dont poke their heads out til 3 in the morning. i mean, that is if you really care about managing the herd for monster bucks.