Steel...First I want to say thank you for your input, the way you handled this conversation allowed it to become constructive not confrentational.

I just want to take a minute to explain why I got into QDM. It started because when I was in high school I would hunt every night of archery season. For my first 4 years of hunting I got a buck. When I didn't get a buck my 5th year and the streak was broken, I started to consider passing yearling bucks (it helped that I had a lot of time to hunt). So I passed yearling bucks and shot a doe here and there for 2-3 years, and I thought I was practicing qdm. Then about a year ago I started talking regularly with the founder of the PA state chapter of qdma. What I was failing to incorporate into my version of "qdm" was habitat management (one of the four cornerstones). Sidenote: there's two fundamental principles of qdma 1) pass yearling bucks to promote a balanced buck age structure, and 2) harvesting enough female deer to balance the herd with the available habitat. Everyone wants to see more deer, so how do you do so without negatively impacting the habitat (and the associated wildlife)...the answer is habitat management. Such management IS NOT limited to food plots, in fact it aggravates me how much emphasis is placed on them. Under qdm, habitat management first and foremost promotes enhancing native vegetation, also, timber management, soft mast manegement, and invasive control are employed. The most important thing to remember is that if you don't control deer numbers, nothing you do to the habitat will work as intended.

Once I started laying out habitat management plans for propertys I found a whole new arena of enjoyment. Just like an architect envisions a blueprint, I look at topos/aerials and determine what changes I can make to the landscape that will increase nutritional productivity, increase cover, increase diversity, increase habitat for non game species, and increase regeneration of preferred species. I like to think of it as an art form. Now you could argue that these habitat projects are not "natural" and therefore they shouldnt be done. But I would ask the question what is natural? If you look around the woods today, ask yourself why oaks are so dominant. They're dominant because for hundreds (if not thousands) of years native americans burned the forest of PA relentlessly. This distrubance regime (coupled with other factors) are what determined the composition of the forests we see today. In essence, I really feel that I'm doing something positive by managing the habitat (provided I manage it to benefit the ecosystem not just deer). One last thing about food plots, there's a lot of species besides deer that benefit from them...namely small mammals and predatory birds.

In regards to your last post about qdm driving a wedge between hunters I think you made some valid points. However, I look at is from a different perspective. I think qdm can bridge the gap between hunter's and non-hunters, ensuring our sport continues. There's a lot of people who like birds, and guess what, most of them want the deer gone because they're destroying the bird habitat. However, they don't really want the deer gone, they want (they may not know it) the deer population to be balanced with the habitat so that the negative effects of deer are minimized. There's no other organization that can bridge the gap the way qdm can because it truly operates with "harvesting enough does to balance the population with the available habitat." Does everyone who practices qdm do this effectively, of course not; however, I highly doubt that those you mentioned getting bad vibes from are active whatsoever in the organization.

I'm gonna post a new thread discussing a deer management meeting I went to last weekend. There were 62 hunters in attendance. I know for a fact that if the mgt program was tweaked to incorporate qdm it would be 10x further ahead than it is today. I hope you have time to read and reply.

Sorry for it being so longwinded...I hope there were some coherent thoughts.