ORIGINAL: SwampCollie
I was falling asleep as I read the article, so pardon me if I cross this up... but the latest issue of Quality Whitetails I read noted something about having too many young bucks in the area and not enough older deer. I don't remember all the specifics. But here is my connect the dot armchair biologist logical shot at it:
Back in the day Schultzy, you had a lot more hunting pressure, and probably like everyone else, back then before the renisscance of QDM, small bucks probably got shot like everything else. We all know the dumbest deer in the woods is a yearling buck.... so I'm sure a fair number of fork horns, spikes and basket 8s got chopped out of that place every year. That left the big boys, who were/are much smarter, to have free run of the place, and rub and scrape and carry on. Now, with more and more does being shot, and small bucks being passed up, you might be having an influx of young bucks.... there will always be more fawns and yearlings than mature deer just due to hunting and natural deaths, or at least a decent split. So maybe you've got a teenage gang running things in your woods this season? Just a thought?
Good point (and I know this was directed as Shultzy, but still). We USED to take about 2-3 bucks off our 90 acres a year (almost entirely rifle season). In the last three or maybe four (I can't remember) years, there have been 0 bucks taken. I'm the only one who hunts it in archery for the most part, and I usually take out one doe, and 0 bucks (I'm hoping to break that trend sometime, lol
), but the kills on our property have dropped drastically, so that theory
could apply here.