My personal opinion at 38yrs of age and someone who has killed well over 100 deer as I live in a very liberal harvest state of MD is this. Do not shoot little deer period wether its private or public land. If you do there is 0 chance it makes it to maturity and this thought process of oh my neighbor may shoot it or someone else who is public ground may shoot it is pure crap. Just some round about way for grown men to justify shooting some small ass deer. If you live in the some remote place where thats your only food for the yr thats a different story but honestly you know thats not the case. I wish every state in the U.S. had antler restrictions on deer for hunters over the age of 16. Killing a deer is a privelage and not a right and if some yrs we had to eat tag soup then so be it. So many people seem to take the approach of I bought a license and I will shoot whatever I want within the law and thats totally legal and totally fine but their the same damn people on here complaining they never see big bucks or asking us to age some 2.5yr old deer for em. I bet well more than 50% of us on here are fisherman and do you believe there should be no size regulations on fish either. Make for some pretty piss poor fishing in about a decade from now if that was the case. If you live in some BS state like CA then need to get people together to change the laws just like we did here in my home state and if you dont like the laws where you are then move or hunt another state. There is alot of truth that most and I say most of hunters mature and go thru a 5 step process and one of them being the trophy stage and understanding that numbers of states have harvest numbers in the 80%'s of yearling bucks and thats just pure disgusting to me. If nothing else they should do a small antler lottery just like some places do for does to eliminate the descimation of yearling bucks by grown ass men. So Dude Im with you on this one and tired myself of hearing all the excuses of why I needed to shoot a small buck. Might be a state here or there with tight doe regs but they are few and far between and as far as Im concerned the trophy hunter and doe hunter is heads and tails above the guy who shoots a four point who is standing with six does. Good post man and with you all the way.