Germ

There is a huge difference, we have to keep things in reality. The UP in MI will never have Iowa caliber deer, but all they need is UP caliber deer. We all should be happy.

I hope we never forget we should always do what is best for the deer herd. If that means we only shoot doe's for a couple years then we do it. For the record I did it for three yearson our farm. If we do not do what is best, then all our "We are conservationest" talk is BS!

Arthur P

How the sam hill do you KNOW which end of the gene pool you're talking about?? You got one of those fancy crystal balls that tells you which young buck is going to be a booker and which is never going togrow anything better than a spindly fork? Why not take the youngbuck of unknown qualityand let the mature one with the proven genes make more like himself?

Keep on going this way and, before you know it, you guys are gonna start preaching catch and release. [8D]

Germ, I am a conservationist. I ain't no freakin' deer farmer though.

Germ

How dare you, LOL
Great never said you were a deer farmer[&:]

boldplate

Man you guys are hard on each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I will have to say that we in NC don't have that big of bucks here. With that being said we (in the club) changed the rules to try to let them go and see if they grow. Well I can tell you that in a short time (two years ) I have seen deer grow! There were only 3 buck killed this year so far and by far they are the biggest deer killed on the mountain in 15 years. Yes it cost $$$$$ for protien and feed. We have put outSMALL plots and the deer will grow. It's all up to you but don't say that you have no good deer till you try!

Last: the people next to us live by "if it's brown it's down" They are next on our list to try to convince.

Just my two cents

Buck Master

All of you guys are saying that that wont work in my hunting area, or mine isnt big enough to have QDM. Then im sorry if you missunderstood my question. I guess the best way to put it is to ask you to step in my shoes. I live in ia, where there IS enough food and IS enough cover to hold bucks within a 2-3 mile radius. I have patterned deer to prove this theory in eastern/ and NEIA.

I understand if you cant do that in your area, I have never hunted anywhere but iowa so i guess i dont have room to critisize anyone else, sorry if you took it that way. But here, you can hunt a 80acre area, and do some QDM, It might not always pan out, but its worth a shot to help the herd, becasue deer to not need to roam that far to find food, water, bedding and to breed. Yet still i get questions of how i can shoot 130 class or bigger deer on a regular basis (which yes, i have a few) My answer is to let them grow. simple, and you might only shoot a buck once evey 2 or 3 years. But they are good mature deer, usually at there peak growing potential, so they are going to stop getting bigger anyways.dont get me wrong, i will shoot does, i did just 2 weeks ago.

GregH

AurthurP, I respect your opinions on the technical side of archery, but when it comes to knowing anything about deer, you don't seem to know squat.[:-]

First of all, no one is leaving any big ones for me to hunt. I'm only hunting a 40 acre tract in the middle of 1280, which is managed by the landholder. He only allows about three guys to hunt his land and they are required to shoot 3 does before they can shoot a buck.These guys didn't pay to shoot a small buck. It is possible that they have a minimum. Besides, how sucessful do you think that each of them is at getting their 3 does? I know they all don't get their 3. The little ones are left to grow. There is no culling of little ones that you say I don't want to see. I like to see all deer.

Second of all, all of the people where I hunt do try to only kill big bucks. And guess what? Those big guys are so hard to kill that not everyone is killing one!! Even during the breeding season (duh). Is this surprising to you? It shouldn't be, but you give the wrong impression that all the big bucks would get killed off. Not true. Lets look at the numbers. In the 1280 acres that I've observed daily for the last 30 days, there are at most 5 hunters hunting it. In the 40 that I hunt I have seen 10 different mature bucks. Kill 5 of them you still got 5 left! There is a lot more than that in the 1280. You could put 100 hunters in there and still never kill off all the mature bucks. So your Darwinism and basic biology don't mean smack. You're wrong.[:-]

Thirdly, no it wouldn't be better to leave the big ones( natures best).Even if you could harvest the best ones, you won't get all of them anyway. By taking the select few that people are lucky enought to get, new ones will take their place that will be just as good as their predesessors. This will allow the gene pool to remain fresh and prevent some in breeding.

Fourthly (is that a word?), you seem to think that trophy hunters along with nature can totally decimate the mature buck population. Again, you're wrong.[:-]It is not possible for trophy hunters to kill off all the mature bucks. The only way you could do that is to kill all the inexperienced young bucks, so that age class never advances to the next class. Again, impossible but would be easier than killing all the mature bucks. Mature bucks are way harder to kill than you realize.

Lastly, you can have your crystal ball, I'll do it as I always have, I'll HUNT them. That is how I have my fun, otherwise, I'd go to a game farm and buy a buck.[:'(]

Duramax05

In upstate NY there are some areas that have antler restrictions. To me, I see great things happening in these areas although I don't hunt there. I haven't found any land in those counties or I would have. I drive through those counties and have seen the results. I think that the restictions may be the only way to get some people to understand that the QDM works. I may not know what Im talking about to all the "shoot anything hunters". I used to be one of them and I am now starting to see the difference. I am by no means a "trophy" hunter as Iowa standards but the deer that I harvest have been better than average for my area. The past two years I've started hunting bigger deer I harvested two 8 points that are about 100". Around here thats big enough to turn heads when it goes down the road in the bed of the truck. Passing deer isnt for everyone, but try it sometime and see what kind of feeling you get after you "could" have harvested the deer. I am looking foward to when the state regs say that the "brown its down" guy cant shoot the fork horn that I just passed up. Hopefully it happens soon. To anyone that is offended by this, please just give it a shot and see what happens. In my experience most people that dont care about horns havent had the opportunity to harvest a wall hanger and to me a wall hanger is a 100" deer, for now.


Josh

Schobs

my family and our huntin camp hunt for meat. we dont go with "if its brown its down" cuz we pass on yearlings, but this season i was lucky enough to see 3 deer and shoot one of them. it was a 1 1/2 yr old fork horn. my first buck, and my 2nd best trophy to date, next to the picture on my desk with me posing w/ my first deer, a mature doe taken w/ my dad sitting right next to me. I said i was lucky enough to see 3 deer, thats because this past 9 day rifle season in WI we had 11 guys hunting for 7 days, and only 2 of us filled a tag, my dads buddy saw 2 does and shot one of them. we are meat hunters, if we were to pass on every deer that isnt 5 1/2 years old or 125" or better, we would not have had venison in our freezers for the past however many years since my dad started meat hunting. i liked the post about natural selection and darwins theory, thats a great thought, so maybe if you really care about managing your herd, you should get out there and tag as many of those small bucks before the rut as you can so they dont breed, and let the monsters do all the mounting, then try for em after every one of your neighbors has been pounding the woods hard for a couple months and all the bucks hole up in the thickest junk you've ever seen and dont poke their heads out til 3 in the morning. i mean, that is if you really care about managing the herd for monster bucks.

GregH

Davidmil,
Usually you are right on, but this time you are off. You are wrong.[:-]Buck fawns are run off by their mothers prior to birthing time, so they are actually the 1 1/2 yo. class. They are not run off by the bigger bucks. Besides, they have to go somewhere and when they get there, guess what?...... There will be mature bucks there also. All age classes of bucks live together in a general area. They each seek out and have their own private core area where others are not allowed. Until the breeding season, many bucks hang out in bachelor groups. These are not always age specific. However, from what I've seen, most of the oldest bucks are reclusive even in the summer and hang out with others closer to their own age if they hang out at all. The largest bucks that I've ever seen, were recluses that preferred their own company, no one elses. What I see is that a good percentage of the 1 1/2s you see in the fall will be there the following year as well. The same with 2 1/2s, they will be back as 3 1/2s the next year. It is the 3 1/2s that start to disperse further and further away. 4 1/2s and older, I'm not sure about, but I don't see them from year to year very often. What I mean is that if I see a 4 1/2 one year, it's 50/50 if I see him the following year. Sometimes I'll skip a year of seeing them, only to see them the next time as 6 1/2s, if I even see them again. For the most part I agree with the rest of what you've said.

davidmil

Everything I've read and seen in real life says I'm at least partially right. Moms do shuu the little guys away when the bucks are courting. The buck fawn from the previous year will get reaquainte with mom usually during the year and is often seen following her and her new fawns in late summer and spring. When the big bucks start getting antsy the next fall the little bucks are run off by the bigger bucks. The fawn that mom chases away is right back with her by the time the rut ends. I've read this in numerous articles by "The Experts". I've seen them with mom all summer during crop damage hunts. I found some reference to it on the web, but not what I was looking for. Here's another squirrelly look at it from a different point of view. They say some of what you say, but not exactly. http://www.thejump.net/Hunting_Articles/manage.htm