RE: Healthy herd myth
How is it the opposite? when you kill most of your bucks at 1.5 years, you have NO idea which ones are bigger and stronger yet. Give them a few years to mature and sort things out and the dominant ones do the breeding. Everyone thinks that when you kill a big one it hasn't had a chance to pass on its line. It has had all those years it lived to do that.
One other thing thrown out in general. Is it possible to have healthy individual deer, in an over unhealthy herd?