The first thing I noticed as our buck:doe ratio tilted towards too many does was the lack of sign in the form of scrapes and rubs. The forest floor was littered with scrapes, and there would be dozens of trees rubbed. Now it is a rarity to find scrapes and I can't remember the last time I saw a signpost rub on the wildernesssemi private land I hunt. It breaks my spirit a little to see a mature hunter dragging a spike or forkhorn out of the woods. Especially when I let the same deer walk by 15 minutes earlier.

Its not always about us humans. The responsibility of the hunter/conservationist is to maintain the land and its inhabitatants. Too often I encounter this selfish hunter mentality that they are owed something because they paid for their hunting license so they are going to shoot anything they see so they have some meat, because they need it. Yet they throw the deer on top of their 40,000 dollar SUV. If you need the meat, by all means take a deer, but why must you shoot the forkhorn that was running by with 4 or 5 does?