Since the last thread garnered about 15 pages of replies and is long gone how about another. I didn't comment in the last thread but read the entire thing. I wasn't sure what QDMA was all about so I read the posts, it seems from an article in Field and Stream that there may be a difference of opinion from the top brass at the QDMA and what the general tone of the last thread was.

Field and Stream ran an aticle this month on the "Oakland Hunting Club" in South Carolina in the new issue. This is an very expensive, exclusive club that manages intensively for the purpose of growing trophy racks from what I can tell.The link to the articleis at the end and , read it and draw your own conclusions.

Basically, they havevery stringent harvest rules, some set by age, but also including cull bucks. If you deviate from the rules you are penalized hunting time during therut. Theyare required to video every buck they see while hunting then theentire camp goes over all the tapes every night. Here is a quote from the exucutive director of the QDMA:

[quoteThese guys are at the leading edge of deer management," says Brian Murphy, executive director of the nonprofit, 50,000-member Quality Deer Management Association. "More and more clubs are intensively managing their deer. What they're doing at Oakland is not unheard of, but it's still rare. The good-news part of this is that these guys have accomplished in South Carolina—not necessarily known as a big-deer state—what was once thought impossible."][/quote]

Seems that the management is set up for trophy deer, the aricle states as much and also that the QDMA is all for it and considers it the leading edge, by their own admission.

So is is managing for a healthy population or simply a facade to grow trophy deer? I don't have a problem with how anyone manages their private land orherd. More power to them. I don't think or want my state enacting QDMA principles and telling me what I can and can't shoot buck wise.
http://www.fieldandstream.com/fieldstream/photogallery/article/0,13355,1632266_0,00.html