Sling

vtbuckrulrss - One comment about deer management at the local level. While it is true that the state natural resouces department establishes a hunting framework to follow (and they should), individual hunters are ultimately the ones managing the herd based on what they choose to harvest (with QDM or without).

In my home state, the DNR is trying to lower the doe population by making doe tags available. They have not been totally sucessful at this because many hunters refuse to shoot does. Even if every person in the state did want to follow the state' s mangagement plan, how would each person know how many bucks or does they were suppose to shoot? I know it is all suppose to all wash out in the end, but it doesn' t (especially on the local level). Nobody is organized and they tend to go out and shoot the first buck they see, just like they always have done. Few does are harvested and that situation repeats itself year after year. At least with QDM there is some sort of organized movement toward a common goal.

Every time you pull the trigger on an animal, you are making a local management decision whether you want to or not. If you took an animal last year, did you take that animal for a reason or did you just take it because it felt right? If you are not looking at the local herd and you are not coordinating efforts with your neighbors (or the state), how do you know you made the correct management decision? Wouldn' t a harvest decision based on local observations and a coordinated effort be better than a guess? The nice about QDM is that animals are harvested for a purpose rather than a whim or a need for antlers.

My main point is that hunters are managing locally with or without QDM. There are plenty of buck-only managers out there that are causing more problems than any QDM program. If the 3 basic principles of QDM are followed, there should not be any issues. If the 3 principles are not followed, it is not QDM.