ORIGINAL: tmeservey
doctori-I'm sure if you watch North American Whitetail Institute Dr. Deer segments or talk with the Drury brothers or talk todeer managers with "masters degrees" orask men and women that manage buck/doe ratios and give buck populations a chance to grow up,we do see stronger results in health and quality. The numbers might not be out there but common sense says it's definetely possible. Minerals,dirt, food, water, all play a major part but letting the fittest surviveto be breeders helps the whole picture if we must get technical. Having habitat is a must but we can grow quality bucks and deer where I live, maybe not like cNY or WNY but we could if they got a chance to put some age on.. Columbia county where I hunt was studied and picked to be one of the primest counties in the state to have the potential to grow big deer. Are they talking big deer???? Very few if any. Last year one buck grossed 150 and it was a freak to see Our deer aren't reachingany age. Wealso haveto many hunters hunting this county(overhunting) which manyof us can relate to and thismakes animal quality almost non-excistent!!!!!
I think we are diving way to deep here in this whole subject of AR.
My question is what is wrong for us to want to see and shoot more quality animals where we live. Will antler restriction help us see more bucks and bigger bucks.Will the probabilities be higher. Yes they will.In 3J where I bow hunt the pilot program has already helped this. This year we already saw more 2.5 year old 8-10 pointers harvested and we saw more 1.5 year olds walking in late bow season that would of been arrowed and dead.I personally saw the same 1.5 year olds still walking at the end of gun season a major rarity!!!!I know most of these 1.5 year olds are now alive because of AR. Next season I will be siked to get into the bow stand!
There will always be deer and they will always survive BUT I would love to make my quality of hunting better because naturally that is a big reason I hunt, to see deer and hope for better deer. Is that wrong, is this greedy or just my human nature? We should all want a chance to see larger deer. Like I stated before, what did deer populations untouched look like. Probably absolutely beautiful!!!!! I could not even imagine. I would love to see just a smidge of that.
To be honest, I don't watch TV shows to get my information on deer, or hunting. I work with the professionals from Albany on down, including the citizen advisory boards which are involved in the process of deer management and harvest goals. TV shows are there not to inform you but to market products their sponsors make. I tend to rely more on information from the biologists, insight from the outfitters and hard work with the citizen planning boards. But that's just me.
There is nothing wrong with your desires. Everyone would love to harvest a trophy buck. Reality is that not everyone will, which is what makes the trophy buck a trophy.
You state we may be diving too deep into AR. I believe you haven't dove deep enough into it. Everything we do has cause and consequence, and before we start messing up nature, we had better dive even deeper than I have already before we make a decision that will without question bite us in the arse.
Yes, the results in the pilot areas APPEAR to be positive. But, was this due to higher AR, or, the reduction of hunting pressure, which had the biggest affect? I ascert that the latter had a bigger impact - lesser numbers of hunters in the woods means more deer will survive. But this isn't the right way to go, driving hunters from the woods, because now we are crippling our own abilities to effectively monitor and maintain the deer numbers properly. It takes money, money to enforce the laws (through ECOs on patrol, and lawyers prosecuting poachers, etc), money to compile the information (data entry personnel, biologists analyzing collected info, biologists and interms conducting field studies, etc). And when you reduce the number of people spending money on licenses which directly fund the activities (and I haven't mentioned land management and habitat monitoring or those associated costs, either) needed to successfully fulfill our responsibility to conservation, we have shot our foot off due to desires to see larger deer. Nothing wrong with the desire, but it does conflict with conservation priorities (the herds come first, your desire comes last).
How about we close deer hunting for two years across the board? That'll let the deer mature better than an AR ever would? The only way AR delivers expected results in the wild is through just that, reducing the number of hunters = more mature deer. WHich of course, decimates the CF, reduces our clout to protect our rights, puts many thousands out of a job because no one is buying anything.
Delve deeper into this. The deer deserve our utmost dilligence, do they not? To say we're diving too deep into this does a major disservice to those animals you perport to love so much. I personally believe the deer are worth far more effort than what you have put forth.