What makes a QDM (Quality Deer Management) program works is an entire hunting community in an area to learn how to age deer (not overly hard to do in Wisconsin anyways). Going with that means hunters are making certain that as many inferior bucks as possible are culled. Weak genetics mean no big bucks.

That's a simple enough concept that has proven true. When a QDM program begins, you often hear of the participating hunters identifying and harvesting the smaller bucks in the first few years while allowing the bigger bucks to procreate. Depending on the existing genetics, in 3-5 years the practice really begins to show a marked difference in the quality of bucks.

The most important aspect of a QDM program is terrain. Not as in the hills, but in the trees growing on the hills. Jack pine country in Wisconsin really drives that point home. In jack pine country bucks can be big bodied, but almost always have small racks so they can actually travel through the woods. Nothing will ever change this without having a negative effect on the population.

The next factor is food. If you don't have a good and steady supply of food, and you add in a bad winter in some places you see smaller racks not because of genetics, but because of external forces.

Wisconsin which has many different QDM regions being run by the landowners has provided a lot of data for the basis of such programs. The biggest thing that has shown through is that a statewide QDM program will almost always uneqevoicably will fail. The state does not invest the proper utilization of resources to make a QDM program work like landowners in certain areas traditionally do.

I'm against statewide QDM because I don't want more rights taken away from myself.