I keep seeing the line "3.5 is an old deer here", wellof coursethey won't get any older than that if you shoot them first! For those hunting on public land, you generally have totake what you get, but those hunting private landhave the power to greatly increase the age structure ofthe bucks on your landby not shooting bucks 3.5 years and younger. I guess it all depends on how big you want the rack to be before you harvest them. I have shotseveral bucksin my days of hunting that I look at the rack nowandthink what a nice deer it would have been the next year. Letting a really nice, but not yet fully mature 3.5 y/o deer walk is a very hard task indeed.