teejarrard,

With all due respect, I think it's you who have it wrong. It's been years since I saw a 130, I can't tell you what the biggest buck I've taken was, nor how I'd go about scoring it. I can tell you it came after a hard morning of brush-busting to find him in his bed on a rimrock at about noon, then a hard, three-mile hike back out with him.

That was almost twenty years ago now. Today, much of the range I used to hunt is closed off - why? Well, because of hunters. We "DEMAND" trophy deer, like the ones in the magazines and on all the TV shows. "130-plus". Gotta have it, or I'm not a good hunter. In response to that, a couple of operators with MONEY showed up on the doorsteps of the privatelandowners where I hunt and bought the hunting rights out from under the rest ofus. Gone are the days of helping a rancher brand or fix fence in the summer in return for a weekend hunt in the fall. Money talks. Worse, these "outfitters" and their "guides" stymie access through that private land to the public land beyond it by throwing up legal challenges to USFS and BLM accesses, effectively locking not only the private land up for their use, but OUR public land for their use as well. They'll sure let the FS or BLM in if there's a fire on the public side threatening their own trees, but not an instance otherwise.

What is their "use"? It's providing 130-plus deer to guys who have $5,000 to spend on a "deer hunt". Thanks to promotion of trophy hunting, not only are we the constant target of the antis, but we're fast pricing the average guy (who has as much right or more to hunt) out of hunting completely - and we have no one to blame but ourselves. Is that what your 130-plus deer is worth?

In the meantime, all the average guys are flocking to what accessible public land is left, which might explain why I haven't seen any deer bigger than 4x4 in the last ten years. If it has horns, it doesn't live very long these days on public land. So, you won't see many "trophy" bucks there - and that's fine by me.