I didn't miss your point at all.......

What I don't understand is why you feel the deer NEED to be helped out by killing off the older stronger mature deer in order for the "herd" to be healthy?

If leftto their own devises(no hunters) there is no doubt deer numbers would soon be over populated in most if not all of the regions they inhabit. But the doe to buck ratios would differ from herd to herd and I suspect there would be far more does than bucks. The doe to buck ratios would be no where near what youand the rest of the QDM crowd would want them to be.

If left to nature only the strong and most healthy would survive yet allyou want to do is shoot does and only mature bucks, letting all of the younger bucks "go so they can grow"these mature bucks are thevery bucks that had itnot been for us hunters would probably be the ones to survive. How is killing them doing ANY justice to the natural order of deer herds?

The deer herds where I hunt are very numerous and in certain spots have almost no hunting pressure to speak of (just me)so they are about as natural aherd as you will find, no crop fields, no feeders, no food plots, just forest and natural growning grass. I can almost guarantee a QDM guy would say the doe to buck ratios were off. I see bucks, lots of them but there are far more does running around yet this happened naturally with no help from anyone and very little effect from hunters, go figure.

Why is it so hard to understand that some people don't want to stack the odds in their favorof seeing big bucks?

Why is it so hard to understand that some people like to hunt what Mother Nature yields and not whata food plot or feeder provided?

Why is it so hard to understand that there doesn't have to be a slammer mature buck behind every tree for the herds to be healthy?

Why is it so hard to understand that different people hunt for different reasons?

Why is it so hard to understand that some people get more satisfaction out of finding and killing the more elusive buck than simply creating more so they can add to their P&Y totals and beat their chest about how great a hunter they are?

I would much rather have one P&Y buck on my wall that I out smarted from it's natural enviornment, having grown the way Mother Nature designedthan to have 10 that I grew and passed on year after year until it was ripe for the picking.

Hunting while providing the only real solution to controlling overall herd numbers and thus helping the deer herds (and the whole eco system that revolves around them) is also very destructive and selfish because the main target (for the most part) is the biggest and strongest of the species. If you truly cared about the deer herds and Quality Deer Management, you would only be concerned with overall numbers period.Not a single mature deer would be killed because after all it's they who stand the best chance of procreating and thus keeping the life cycle going.

QDM is NOT about deer it's about hunters shooting big bucks.

Shoot what you want, be as ethical and honest as you can and enjoy the SPORT that is hunting. If that means only hunting slammers then good for you, I'm right with you. If it means shooting whatever makes you happy then good for you, I'm right with you as well.