Good post buckeye - 100% true.

The truth about hunters is (and I don't mean to offend anybody by this), they have no idea how old the deer are that they're shooting, and they don't understand the etiology of an antler deformity. They see a small rack, they just presume that it's an old buck with "bad genes." Newsflash: All yearlings aren't spikes, and just because he's a spike doesn't mean that he's "genetically inferior." They see a 4x1, and presume that he needs to be eliminated because he's "genetically inferior." They have no idea that he probably just has a bad hoof on the good side, or that he's only a yearling. He may have gotten smacked by a car orsplit ahoof.

Sorry, but the gene pool within a free rangingherd is essentially the same. They are all 99.999% identical. Shooting every deer with a scrub rack isn't going to change the genetics of your herd. You're probably just shooting all your youngsters. Honestly, if you want to introduce new genes, you'd have to buy deer from Saskatchewan or some remote area, and have them shipped into your area and released. A physical injury to a deer will not alter its genetic makeup.

I would argue that there is no such thing as a "cull" deer. In my opinion, deer are either mature or not mature.

It's like this: Imagine an early dropped buck fawn - survives his first winter and is well-fed.At 1.5 he's got a great potential, sporting a thin 4x4 rack - 14" outside- good food, good muscle tone. Joe Hunter Asays to himself "that's a1.5 year oldbuck thathas monster potential." Joe Hunter B says "That's a runt 2.5 year old, gotta cull him. He fires and misses. Over the winter,our bucksplinters his lower left front leg in a rocky crevasse. Now the next fall, he's sporting a nice, heavy4 point left antler, with a gangly fork on the right. Now, Joe Hunter A says "that's a cull buck with bad genetics - gotta shoot him before he reproduces." He kills him and never even notices the partially-mended fracture in the lowleft leg. He tells his buddies that he culled a 3.5 year old4x2 and did the herd a favor. The truth is that this is a perfectly normal2.5 year old deer that never reached maturity due to guys incorrectly field-judging him as a "cull" deer.

Maybe I'm crazy.

All that might as well be talk about the Easter Bunny or Santa Claus, because around here, if a deer lives to see his third birthday, he should be awarded a Nobel Prize or Lifetime Achievement Award.