RE: Shouldn't they be bigger?
The place I hunt was managed poorly up until the 1980's. The old rules were no does were shot, and spikes were not culled. Over half of the buck population did not have brow tines.
In 1994, we started filling doe tags and culling spikes. A 5.5 spike was culled in 1995, along with several spikes that were 2.5 or older. For the first 5 or so years, very few mature bucks were taken, because so many tags were filled with culls (1 buck county).
I've seen one spike the last two years, and no mature cull bucks. Size and quality of the bucks has gone up noticeably, with all hunters able to fill their tags with quality deer. This is on approximately 700 acres free range.