BUT if more hunters stopped shooting a buck just for the sake of it being a buck, then everyone would feel they had a chance at a decent deer, and they wouldn't need to resort to shooting the 1st thing that walked by.
Due To AR we stopped shooting small buck in PA in 2002. The result was only 9,400 additional hunters harvested a 2.5+ buck in 2003 ,while 61 K hunters failed to harvest a buck. So a whole lot of buck hunters were unsuccessful ,just so 1% of the buck hunters could harvest a buck that was 1 year older. Also, remember not all of the 9,400 additional 2.5 buck were 8 + pts. The number of 2.5+ 8 pts harvested only increased by a little over 4K. So while many were bragging about all the big bucks they were seeing, that was not reflected in the statewide harvest data.