He never said that, he said there weren't enough older buck doing the breeding. Yearlings were, and while they can complete the task, they loose lots of energy and fat stores while doing a job the older bucks should be doing, as in a healthy herd.
No, that is not what he said. He said their weren't enough bucks to breed all the doe in a timely fashion and that is why we had late born fawns. But, the studies showed that most late born fawns were due to yearling doe reaching their first estrus after the peak of the rut which resulted in late born fawns. Furthermore ,increasing the percentage of older bucks had no effect on breeding rates ,productivity or the breeding period,so Alt was flat out wrong.
And we did so by the success of antler restrictions protecting some of those yearlings which dominated the harvest; and producing a large 2.5 class as evidenced in the harvest where they once made up around 18% of the harvest and now are about 50% of it.
The first year of ARs was 2002 and even though none of the 2.5+ buck harvested that year were due to ARs, 2.5+ buck were 32 % of the buck harvest. In 2003, the first year there were 2.5+ buck as a result of ARs it increased to 44% ,which is only a 12 % increase from 2002.
You claim ARs produced a large 2.5+ class , but in 2002 we harvested 52,602 2.5+ buck and in 2007 we only harvested 48,048 2.5+ buck and after 8 years of ARs we harvested less than 3000 more 2.5 buck in 2009 than in the very first year of ARs. Those are the facts that refute the PGC propaganda that you are parroting.
In 2002 we harvested 112,814 1.5 buck and 52,602 2.5+ buck while in 2009 we harvested 53,082 1.5 buck and 55,248 2.5+ buck. So,were more buck hunters happy in 2002 or in 2009?