Antler Restrictions
Agree or disagree? I'm against legislating the size of deer we can harvest. Most of us here like to take trophy sized deer, but new hunters and young hunters need a chance to be successful also, or they will become discouraged and find another hobby. Hunter education is the key, and I believe with the amount of info being fed to us through magazines, tv shovs and videos, modern hunters will practice some control when it comes to smaller bucks. I, and most everyone i know will let a young buck walk in hopes of taking a trophy, filling our freezers with doe meat. We have gone antler crazy and I believe it's going to be the death of deer hunting as we know it. Big deer are out there, but they're hard to kill, that's what makes them trophies. During the 1960's, when there were hardly any deer to speak of in MO, my great uncle killed two big deer and no one cared about antler size. His sons had them scored a couple of years ago and they both went in the 180's. What AR's amount to is dumbing down the deer herd so anyone can kill a wallhanger. Letting stupid deer grow to be 5 or 6 years old makes for a lot of stupid offspring. Please post if you are a "trophy hunter" who didn't learn to hunt bucks by killing several 1 and 2 yr old deer. As I said before, hunter ed is the key, killing does in the place of young bucks. So what if your neighbor's kid killed the 6pt you let walk? Be happy for him. Our selfishness will be our ruination.