ORIGINAL: bluebird2
Here is what the PGC had to say about the study.
When it comes to yearling buck antlers, there are two schools
of thought: the “once a spike, always a spike” crowd and
those who disagree. Some believe that spike or small antlered
yearling bucks are “inferior,” meaning they lack the potential
for future antler growth compared to those yearlings that
produce larger antlers. A recent article published in the
Journal of Wildlife Management in 2008 titled “Juvenile-to-
Adult Antler Development in White-Tailed Deer in South
Texas” might finally put an end to the debate.
Obviously the PGC was attempting to use this study to refute claims that ARs were protecting buck with inferior genetics for antler development. However, the study showed that ARs do in fact protect bucks that are inferior for the RATE of antler development, and that is the reason why ARs result in high grading and smaller average rack sizes for 2.5+ buck.
Antler restrictions has had no affect what so ever on the quality of the antlers for the same age class of bucks.
That may be you opinion , but I doubt you can provide the data to support that claim. On the other hand, the data from Miss. clearly shows that ARs resulted in high grading and smaller rack sizes of 2.5+ buck and the Koerth study further supports my position.
Nothing has changed other then we have more older bucks then ever before and they have better antlers then the younger bucks that once dominated the buck population
That simply is not true. What has changed is that we are now protecting bucks that are inferior for the RATE of antler development as the study clearly demonstrated. Furthermore, we now have fewer older buck than we did in 2002 ,before any bucks were protected by ARs, and we have a lot fewer 2.5+ buck than we had in 2003.
BTW, younger bucks still dominate the buck population just as they always have and always will. ARs just made 50% of them illegal. If you want to be taken seriously ,you should be more careful about making claims you can't back up.
It is your claims that aren’t backed up with the real deer studies.
Those computer simulated studies you keep trying to hang your hat on have been very well discredited by a number of other studies that showed totally different results when real deer were studied instead of the make believe deer in your studies.
You still haven’t produced anything that supports your comments concerning the Deer Chronicles either.
Nor is there anything, not one single shred of anything, that gives any indication that the antlers of the Pennsylvania bucks being adversely affected since the introduction of antler restrictions regardless of how much you wish there was. You keep saying that the bucks are being high graded and the antler are getting smaller but you are full of bologna because it just isn’t happening the way you say it is.
In fact a sample of 1052 semi local bucks from the four years before antler restrictions compared to 1607 bucks from the same core areas sampled during the past five years show that the antlers have improved instead of declining. Since antler restrictions the average points on the bucks going to the taxidermists has increase by 2.2% while the spread has increased by 5.5%.
Your opinions of antler restrictions resulting of high grading in a wild herd simply aren’t supported by the real facts, other then from some make believe deer in a computer simulation.
R.S. Bodenhorn