ORIGINAL: livbucks
We went over this prior and my contention was that high grading can't happen on 1.5 year old bucks. The rack development is dictated by external factors too much at that age. Somehow the idea didn't get across when I was saying it. Too much dilution of nutrition and birth date at 1.5 to have the harvesting of a certain characteristic make any difference. Did we not agree that a 1.5 year old spike can have the potential to grow a 12 point (example) rack, if left to it's devices?
Since all the buck in a given area are subject to the same habitat conditions, that is not a factor in high grading and it doesn't matter if a spike is due to being late born .If it takes 3 more years to become a 12 pt., high grading will still occur,because it is likely that the spike will be harvested as a 2.5 ,5-6Pt. rather than a 4.5, 12 pt.
In order to prevent high grading, the point restrictions have to be set to protect around 90% of the 1.5 buck and with a restriction that high it protects too many 2.5+ buck.