There's been a lot of comments about neighbours not practicing better managment. This is prevalant everywhere. Thing that I find about this is the mature bucks only get shot out of luck most of the time.

What I am saying is the "brown is down" guys all tag out on spikes, basket 8's, little sixes or does. If you have neighbours like this your monster buck is more safe than if you had a trophy hunter next door.

I used to hunt as part of a camp in a deer rich public managment area in my early hunting days. 3 camp leases in about 1000 acres of big bush and deer swamp. Our camp and one other was "brown it's down". The third however pracrticed QDM and only shot mature bucks.

At the end of the gun week the 2 camps had does and small bucks hanging and every once in awhile a mature buck got shot. The QDM camp had 6 guys and would end up with 4-6 mature bucks hanging.

They never worried about us shooting everything because they knew the doe got shot before the big buck following even showed himself.

I let that buck walk but it ain't easy for me . I learned that odds are I'll get a crack at him next year and I think this deer is still young on his way to be a bruiser.