As usual you quote just a part of something and not the whole content. While it's true that that quote, narrowly interpereted and without the rest of Dr Kroll writings, only addresses the culling of first year bucks, the rest of the content of the study and subsequent writings about it support a spread AR over a point count in all young bucks which he later defines as under 4.5 but Dr Kroll supports AR as a direct conclusion of his research.
As usual , while I provide exact quotes from the study you provide absolutely nothing to support your position. We are not discussing a spread restriction ,we are discussing the effects of PA's ARs.
So what we have from Dr Kroll is that we cant tell the genetic potential from a bucks antlers till he's 4.5. We are therefore not taking out the bucks with the best genes unless a buck manages to get to be 4.5 and still isn't legal (highly unlikely)
No , that is not what the study shows. In fact , it shows that we are harvesting the bucks with the best genetics for the rate of antler development in a state where only around one out of 5000 buck live to be 6 years. That means the average buck produced by saving spikes and Y's will be smaller than in a non-AR herd