I could not agree more.

What is not being represented is the effort to produce a HEALTHY deer herd in NY. Not a TROPHY herd. A healthy herd is one that has a fair cross section andpopulation of all age groups. If you kill off better than 75% of all 1&1/2 year old bucks every year the numbers get skewed terribly. There needs to be a representative group of mature bucks to claim that the herd is healty. In some parts of NY, (like the Catskills)thatjust is NOT the case.How about using that platform to support AR's? Simply put more bucks need to survive past 18 months in order to establish a representative group of mature male deer, to claim a healthy herd.

In NY the standard AR of "3 on one side" will include a large percentage of 1&1/2 year old bucks. I myself over the years have shot many 6,7 & 8pt deer that were aged at 1&1/2 years old. Not one of them could be confused as a trophy class deer but they are legal by the NY AR standard. Nobody is trying to create "Texas" herd where you many not harvest anything unless it exceeds 140 inches. We need to keep perspective on this. The High Grading argument does not wash in so far as the NY argument exists.

s6