Well let's see. If you get one tag and no doe tags I'd say you'd whack a 130 pound buck before whacking 80-100 pounds of doe. Lots of areas, like where I live now, don't give you all those doe options. It's a draw here and many don't get a doe tag. With low deer densities and hardly any macho bucks running around, a little 6 or 8 pointer is an acceptable pile of meat. I don't measure racks, eat racks or admire them a whole lot. Most end up as squirrel food in the yard. It's really easy to say shoot a doe or two or 3 or 10 if you have the tags and the population. When I'm in big buck country and haveput a deer in the freezer I get picky, like when I'm in Ohio. I'vepassed up several bucks in Ohio the past couple years that would have been dead at home. If I'm on someone elses property I ask them the rules and abide, but when I'm by myself that basket rack might just catch an arrow. When I'm in the Southern Tier on public land with hoards of hunters he may just catch an arrow. Last year in early bow season I whacked the first decent 8 point I saw.(a 4 day season) After that I let them walk. There is no right or wrong answer to this question. If it's legal it's legal and that really should end the debate. What I choose to shoot or pass on, in no way effects ANYONE else on this board.
These guys I guess are also paranoid on many levels and can be heard at the hunt clubs making statements such as "you can't eat them antlers" and "there ain't no big bucks in my area".
I don't really feel "THESE GUYS" are in any way paranoid. For the most part they enjoy hunting and many have done it probably longer than you've been breathing. Many of them have passed their share of deer also. I don't really know any "If it's brown it's down people". Yes, they do say you can't eat them antlers.... because you really CAN'T. Or at least they taste like crap. You may here them say that one and half year old taste a lot better than that rutted out 5 year old too. And guess what, in most cases they're right.
There really is NO debate here. Just two different groups of hunters. The one group loves to hunt and eat meat. The other group loves to hunt, measure racks and thump their chest when they get a big one. No debate, just hunters doing what is legal. When they make it law we'll all abide. The second group is really the new kid on the block. We didn't hear QDM 10 years ago. 30 years ago most of the Great White Hunters of today wouldn't have gotten a deer or had deer to hunt. The exploding deer populations of the past 20 years have made a lot of "Trophy Hunters" out of people that couldn't even begin to score 30 years ago.
Things change. Maybe QDM will become the thing... maybe it'll pass like the market hunters. Who knows. I do know that the Horn Hunter Craze has cost a lot of people the land they used to beable to hunt for free. It's cost a lot of residents in big buck states places to hunt when the USO outfitters of the world moved in and leased up the back 40 on farmer Dans place. All the year round food plots and bait stations have taken the hunting out of hunting to me. I really hate sitting on a field or bait or deer forage. I'd much rather wander into a deep cedar swamp and see what I see. Some would rather spend thousands of dollars on what they call QDM, when all it is is antler farming. No debate.... just 2 different groups of people trying to kill something. I call it kill... PC correct and QDM people call it "Harvest". I'll call it harvest when they call what I did in Vietnam as Harvesting Dinks. [8D]