Nice Buck!!
I like your thinking on the antler restrictions. We started doing the same thing about 5 years ago w/o the penalty, and this year we shot 6 buck, 5 of them are 8 point 16" spread and larger. The one smaller buck was shot by a cousin who was harvesting his first buck. We now discuss possibly letting the 16-18" spread class pass and hopefully take a step to the next class of buck. If your interested below is a link to three of our buck this year.
http://onfinite.com/libraries/206579/16c.jpg