Here's exerpts from an article by Charlie Alsheimer talking about stress:
It takes four basic ingredients to produce a buck with a 170-inch rack - genetics, habitat, herd management, and age.
To see how tough it is to raise a whitetail from a fawn to a Booner, let's look at two scenarios - the real world and a controlled environment - to see how various factors affect antler growth.
The real world refers to any place in North America with free-roaming whitetails. These deer must cope with everything nature and humans throw at them. The stress heaped on them often reaches absurd levels, resulting in suppressed antler growth. I believe stress on free-ranging deer is cumulative and antler growth is suppressed in varying degrees depending on how many stress factors are placed on a herd.
Whitetails still deal with environmental stress factors even when human activity is removed from an area. For example, in remote southern locations, extreme heat and parasites heavily burden deer herds. In northern climates, whitetails have a far different problem: brutal winters with deep snow and bitter cold temperatures. Winter's stress can severely suppress antler growth, especially when it leads to substantial over-browsing of habitat.
No matter where it occurs, drought is a major suppressant of antler growth, especially if it occurs during the critical antler-growing season of April through July. Bucks need large quantities of lush nutritional food to fully realize their antler-growing potential.
Insects are another environmental stressor. Swarms of insects have been known to kill domestic animals, but they also take the lives of deer.
Bucks can grow impressive antlers when they receive a variety of highly nutritious foods. However, these food sources disappear quickly when too many deer are on a property. Therefore, bucks living on over-populated range won't always grow large racks, at least not what they are capable of. This is why it is so important to keep the whitetail population in line with the range's carrying capacity.
A region's deer population is as important as food availability in allowing a buck to reach maximum antler potential. Antler growth suffers when an area becomes too densely populated.
Dave Griffith and his brother Rick operate a state-of-the-art whitetail gene/semen collection operation in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania. After years of observing antler growth in their breeder bucks, the Griffiths have reached some interesting conclusions.
"Whitetails are very sensitive to overpopulation and do poorly if there are too many deer," Dave Griffith notes. "We've found that if we leave a breeder buck with a group of does from breeding time to fawning time the buck's antlers are almost always smaller the next year. When we remove the buck from the does right after the breeding is over, antler growth doesn't suffer. Bucks - especially top-end bucks - do better when they can be alone or in bachelor groups.
"We know that if bucks are forced to be around too many deer, they'll seldom reach their full antler potential."
A deer herd's sex ratio is a significant suppressant of antler growth, and it doesn't take many deer to skew the odds against bucks. For example, antler growth suffers in areas that have more than three adult does for every antlered buck. When herds exceed this ratio, the rut stretches to a danger point for bucks, especially mature bucks. A two-to-one ratio isn't bad, but, for maximum growth potential, an area should have only one adult doe for every antlered buck.
The rut lasts about forty-five days in areas with balanced ratios. However, when the adult doe-to-antlered buck ratio exceeds three adult does for every antlered buck, the rut can last ninety days or more. This is dangerous, because in the North, it means the rut will stretch into the winter months. In turn, rutting bucks enter this critical period so worn down they cannot recover before their antlers begin to grow in April. In such instances, it is not uncommon for mature bucks to die from additional winter stress.
"To reach optimum antler growth, every white-tailed buck needs to go into a new antler-growing season with a full tank, so to speak," Dave Griffith points out. "Think of it this way - a whitetail's bone marrow system is like a fuel tank. If their bone marrow and body condition are not in top condition when the sun says 'Start growing antlers!' they can't possibly reach their full antler potential. So, body maintenance is critical when it comes to antler growth. Removing stress helps achieve the results we're looking for."
Charelie mentioned six factors of enviornmental stress that limit antler growth: enviornment, food, population, adult doe to antlered buck ratio, the rut, and predation.
To find the article do a quick google seach "charlie asheimer, stress"
Once again, I feel it was an oversight on my part to say "breeding stress" instead of "stress."