Laws vary from state to state, if I went to call in a spike here in Illinois the DNR would laugh at me. It all depends on where you are at and the attitude of the officer in your zone. In mine, calling in a buck would be absolutely useless unless it was close to some sort of record. The DNR is way to busy to be dealing with this around me and will tell you when you call in and IF (and thats a big if) you get a hold of them they just won't care. The DNR knows the difference between a freshly killed deer that was poached and one that was killed 4 months ago that you will do a european mount on. There looking for poachers, not someone taking a walk in the spring.

I'm taking it that you have every tag of every deer you have every shot in your life still attached to the antler, because if you didn't then how do we know they weren't poached? I guess that would be breaking the law if you took the tag off an antler at anytime, but last time I check, I have seen very few mounted deer on peoples walls, in stores and such with tags still attached.

Please don't preach us on advice to give and "Getting our act together", you do not know what state we are in or the situation of our local DNR, we are telling our opinions, not what the laws of his state our. The vast majority of hunters on here are law abiding citizens giving there opinions and help out fellow hunter and work to promote the sport more than most.