No I'm not saying that, and there is much research that supports harvesting spikes regardless of what you see on your own property. I'm advocating harvesting less dominant bucks and more spikes/does. Age really isn't an issue and I fail to see how you can age a anterless or spike deer reliably under field conditions. I don't think body weight should matter. It's either got branched antlers or it doesn't. You don't want to promote any kind of inferior spike breeding in your herd. It's ok to kill a young spike in your herd...you know the whole survival of the fittest thing. You want to select for the smarter, faster etc....among the new age class that will be entering the breeding population.

What I'm saying is: by not taking spikes you are (theorhetically) letting the inferior bucks breed, thereby passing on inferior genes and then your killing the dominant bucks, and promoting a situation were the less dominant bucks will do more of the breeding, which extends the breeding period, which means less does will get bred and more does will concieve later and thus lowering fawn survival. So I wouldn't be surprised if you have more spikes running around than usual. Seems pretty simple to me. You kill the dominant bucks and protect the scrubs....that's what you said right? Look I'm not making this stuff up. I don't know the entire situation on your land but I'm giving my opinion based on what you said.