Stealthycat,

Your question about the high pressure on the mature animals. What you'd find in areas of a good age-structure is that it would be much harder to actually shoot a buck if you had to stick to the mature animals only. Those animals react very differntly to pressure than other animals and adapt to pressure much easier.

In my neck of the woods if a buck reaches 3.5 years old he is a true survivor. He has avoided 100's of bait piles, coyotes, wolves, bobcats, bears, maybe a cougar or two, exteme winters, lack of food, and cars. When those animals are in the herd, they bring a level of confidence and relaxation to the rest of the herd that has many physcological and physical benifits. These bucks do most of the breeding in this situation, and therefore pass on many of their great survival traits. It would be amazing, and is amazing in most parts of the country that have well managed herds. Those mature animals are pressured in many ways throughout the entire year, but are an important, irreplacable role in herd society.

I think the only negative things that would take place in a macro-management environment would be decreased buck harvest by those that continue to rely on yearling buck harvest stratagies, less of an appreciation for a minimum P&Y buck because of increased availability, and a reduction in license sales due to the difficulty of some to harvest an older animal.

All the benifits are proven by biology and science, the unknowns are the effects of hunter participation due to increased difficulty in hunting. On one hand you'd see a greater number of superior animals, rubs, scrapes and the like, on the other hand the mature animals are harder to hunt and have exceptionally enhanced survival skills.

I personally like more meat. The 2.5 year old 8-point I shot this year weighed in at about 150#'s and gave me 62#'s of de-boned meat. The 110# yearling 4 point my dad shot 2 years ago(we now have an 8 point rule), gave him 35#'s of de-boned meat. The mature does in our area give you between 50 and 60 pounds of meat. People shoot a spike for meat???

Jeff...U.P. of Michigan.