Hello
The past two years have been earn a buck in the area that I hunt, Southern Wisconsin. I didn't like the earn a buck in the beginning. I had to hunt hard for a doe to set myself up with a buck tag for the rut.
But I can honestly say that now I kind of like it. This fall I didn't see that many deer, but I saw several dandy bucks, one of them just awesome. I've hunted with my bow for big bucks most of my thirty years of bowhunting. Never did I see as many in one season as this year, the second year of the earn a buck program. Overall I saw less deer, but definitely there was an improvement in the bucks. One afternoon I had a doe come by with four different bucks in tow. Most people would've been proud to have taken any of those bucks. It clearly showed the doe population had been thinned and the big bucks had competition.


The last night of our season I had eight whitetails walk past my stand at 35 yards. First three does, then five bucks. I shoot a longbow and my effective range is only thirty yards. Plus they came out single file in waves. The last couple bucks came past after season was over and it was getting pretty dark, but I could see that the last one was a buck of at least 150", one that I'd seen at eighty yards just before dark about four days earlier.
NEEDLESS TO SAY, I WALKED OUT FIRED UP FOR NEXT SEASON.

These are just my observations on what the earn a buck did in my hunting area.
Dan

PS: that 150" whitetail wasn't the awesome one seen during the rut. The awesome one had the largest body I'd ever seen for a whitetail in the wild. He had a stagger to him like an angus bull and antlers to match.
DID I MENTION I'M PUMPED UP FOR NEXT SEASON!