That Ohio system sounds pretty reasonable to me. Ideally, I like the season structures that they have in Illinois and Iowa...where there are a couple of short firearms seasons in December after the peak rut. Between the bow, muzzleloader and regular firearms seasons in these states you can still take 2-3 bucks. Just having the gun season when the bucks aren't at their most vulnerable period of the year would still save a pile of bucks without the need for ARs. I realize that most hunters in NY would be totally against this proposal because the numbers of buck sightings would be down significantly. I can never image this happening in NY anyways.

I just can't understand what everyone has against seeing more older buck in the herd. Where I'm from here in NE Steuben County (and throughout most of the state) its the same thing in most areas every year...we have a lot of yearlings bucks in the herd before season and most get killed off during gun season. Then the next year, all of last years button bucks will have their first racks and all of them will get shot off and then its time to make way for the next years button buck crop again. It goes over and over with no variety in the herd. It gets old after a while. On other properties in the area its common to see entire bachelor groups made up of 2-3 yr. old and sometimes older bucks. On one little 1/2 mile strip of hayfields near my house a couple of summers ago I videoed / saw around 3 dozen different bucks with 16 different bucks that were at least 8-pts. with spreads as wide as there ears, with several being really nice 130-150+" deer. I don't hunt here but it sure was awesome to see all of these nice bucks in such a small area. It sure isn't a common site here in hard hunted western NY. Is it a bad thing that there were all of these nice bucks in the area and some of the local hunters got the chance to tie their tags onto a nice set of antlers for a change? In case you're wondering, there are two really big tracts of land surrounding these fields that are totally off-limits to hunting that give the deer a good place to retreat to during deer season. The bucks sightings were way down in this area last summer mainly due to the hayfields remaining uncut all summer and not to mention that a really high number of bucks were killed in this area during the 2003 season. Although this farm was a major let down, I saw over 30 bucks on a different farm a couple of miles from there. From what I hear hardly any bucks were killed in this area this past season. Although I don't hunt here either, I still can't wait until this summer just to see how many nice bucks I can get on video from this farm.

What's my point? What a difference in the age class of the bucks in a deer herd when a number of those first year bucks can make it another year or two. For me, it sure is awesome just to see large racked bucks doing what the do in the wild as opposed to the little scubby yearlings that everyone is used to seeing, even if its on a farm you can't hunt on. I just like driving around looking for these big bucks. As far as hunting goes...wouldn't you rather be sitting in a treestand on one of this farms where you just might get the opportunity to see or even get a shot at a nice buck. I gotta say for me personally, its not that little forkhorn that I dream about in the weeks leading up to deer season. With AR's is everyone gonna get a crack at a big buck every season and are boone and crockett bucks gonna be running aroung like squirrels just begging to be shot? I don't think so. So, if beening sick and tired of seeing 90% of the yearling bucks being harvested out of our of the herd every season makes me one of those "brain-washed" followers of "trophy hunting" so be it [:'(].