I tried not to get involved in these threads, but I can't hold my breath any longer. I hope to shed a little light on the QDM bashers with my own real world experience. I gurantee if you have seen what I have, you would change your tune.

Also, let me point out that QDM is being mixed up with QAM (Quality Antler Management)around here a little too much. Bigger bucks are in fact a SIDE BENEFIT of the QDM movement, but are not the objective.

Now to my real world experience, how we as game managers have messed up and why QDM is the right choice.

I am EXTREMELY fortunate to be able to hunt an area that has almost zero hunting pressure and one area within this area that, in fact, has zero hunting pressure, except from my family. This is an area that has no human traffic and most of the deer have never seen ahuman before. The buck to doe ratio is almost 1:1. There are natural predators, wolves.

We as "game managers" have failed miserably. Our first mistake was to eliminate thenatural predators because theywerekilling "our" animals. The natural predators, wolves,are not selective hunters. They do not care if it is adoe, fawn,sick, weak, or a healthyand mature buck.In early game management wethought that more deer was better. In that old school of thought, (which many still posess)only bucks should be killed. These two factors have solely caused the huge boom and problem in the population.

In anotherpost someone mentioned the days when he saw very few deer and hunting was a challenge. Over the years this same person, like many others, killed only bucks and left the does to breed.How many of these does actually died from year to year? Very few. Why? There was no longer a predator to take them out of theherd, the wolves were in fact gone. Now we have the problem of the buck to doe ratio getting out of whack. In the natural world, and healthy herd, the buck to doe ratio would be nearly 1:1. You could argue that we have "farmed" our population to be as large as it is today. (I've heard that term thrown around recklessly as well)

If we are to be used as a tool for game management and want to keep our hunting traditions alive, we need to change. Drastically. The idea of kill what you want, as long as its legal, is a very naive way of thinking and needs to fall by the wayside. Along with the idea of the more deer I see while hunting, the better.

Theidea of QDM, (not QAM!)is a very powerful tool and very simple. Shoot more does and only mature bucks. By doing this you bring the buck to doe ratio closer and it begins to resemble the natural world, before we showed up andbotched it.Its as plain and simple as that.Though most people don't like it, because they then won't see as many deer.

I'm not the best at transfering my thoughts from my brain to the screen. I probably left some holes in my thinking and will be back to fill them in.

It all seems pretty black and white to me. Then again, I have been to the promised land of deer hunting and have seen what99.9% of people will never see in their lives.A truely undisturbed and natural deer herdlivingand thriving next to the greatest quality deer managers out there, the wolf.