First, the healthy herd argument is a ruse from the start. AR is not about health, it's about antlers and improving the odds for hunters to kill a deer with large antlers. Anyone with 2 brain cells to rub together can see through the healthy herd charade so let's be honest when we talk about it, and not pretend the motivation is altruistic. Second, the deer in NYS are as healthy as can be. Health isn't determined by some arbitrary ratio between males and females, it has to do with the existence and/or extent of maladies found within the population. Somebody please tell me what disease, malady or nutritional deficiency we are trying to eliminate and how AR will help.

Doe to buck ratio? Certainly if there are not enough buck around to service the adult females then it would be a bit hard on the males to handle their task but once the job is done it just doesn't matter if every year you shoot every antlered deer in New York State. The remaining females and bb's would go about their business, blissfully ignorant that no mature males exist, and with more food available to them because the no longer needed males wouldn't be chowing it down. Now statistically, 1/3 of this remaining population would be bb's and next years antlered and sexually mature 1 1/2 year olds. In the spring, statistically each adult female will produce a male and female fawn. That brings the doe to buck ratio to to begin the next season to 3:2, the anterless to antlered ratio to 4:1 and the ratio of sexually mature females to sexually mature males to 2:1. Without something peculiar effecting mortality or birthrates you just can't get around these numbers. The imfamous ratios of 8 or 10 to 1 that many hunters cry about just doesn't occur until well into the gun season when antlered deer are heavily targeted in some areas. Now by design, the gun season in NY is set near the end of the rut when most of the mating is over so for the majority of the rut ratios are absolutely not anywhere near what AR advocates suggest. Not only that, but 50 + years of our current management strategy has produced a large and healthy whitetail population and with plenty of trophies to boot. But even in the worst case scenario I described where only 1 1/2 year olds are doing the mating you would have to argue that genes from a youngerdeerare inferior to the genes of an older deer in order to make a logical healthy herd argument. Last I knew, the genes a 4 1/2 year old carries are the same ones he carried when he was a bb. Clearly an animal isn't healthier just because it's older.

So now AR advocates suggest we abandon a proven management strategy for one that even theoreticallyhas not been shown to improve the health of a single whitetail. It offers only the promise of increasing the average age of the male population (which means bigger racks and the real reason for all the hoopla) and a lower doe to buck ratio but not so much during the rut when it matters but after the gun season takes out the majority of males when it doesn't.

No, AR is about making it easier to kill a bigger racked deer. Period. Nothing wrong with that either. I simply believe the individual freedom of choice to implement AR or not implement it is of more value than the somewhat improved odds to take a trophy brought about by a state wide law. I also fear the protentially serious problems that could arise that SteveBNy talks about.