cat your right any buck will make a mistake but the point is this . if a mature buck of age around 5 lets say, i doubt he made too many mistakes in his lifetime. a buck doesnt get 5 by making mistakes. and yes the rut does change their patterns with all the chasing of does and sparing with other bucks for the right to breed the does but what do you think it does to the deer numbers if everyone shoots smaller bucks? especially if they havent even been given the chance to become sexually mature enough to breed the does? simple math will explain that question. and yes i agree that a trophy is whatever it means to that specific hunter. but its not like we are talking about a state that has hundreds of deer running wild around evryones stand. obviously there is population issues in pa for the state to do restrictions so again how is a smart thing to do to shoot deer that are not even given the chance to reproduce? i just dont understand the arguments in pa. and also i read somewhere in one of these posts that someone stated that pa hunters are not trophy hunters and that they were not taught to be until the hunting shows on tv glamourized it but thats a bold statement to speak for the tens of thousands that hunt the state. even if that was true as a whole it still doesnt excuse the fact that everyone that goes in the woods to deer hunt is going for 3 reasons. 1 the experience, 2 the meat, and 3 the big boy. i dont know anybody out there that can honestly say that they would let a monster walk to shoot a doe or a smaller buck. come on thats just crap.