Because if you talk to the same person pushing that statement long enough the conversation ALWAYS falls back to just wanting to make it easier to shoot bigger bucks.


Physical appearence and overall survival rates are about as good of an indicator as you are gonna find..............sure beats some clown telling me a deer is "healthy" because he scores 150 +



There is and will never be anything normal about deer biology as long as humans exist............we influence them in so many ways it would be hard to count them all.............to yearn for a "natural" deer herd would be a pretty hypocritical stance to take considering all we have and will continue to do to throw a monkey wrench into those gears. IMO



It's not a crime...............unless you try to force everyone else to do it as well. Believe it or not, everyone doesn't think alike. When the anti's try to force their beliefs on hunters we are unified in opposition..............then some of those same guys go to the next meeting and try to force their beliefs on the other hunters they stood side by side with to fight that exact thing. Weird.



Who gets to define "natural"???


No they're not...............it's when they try to force everyone else to do it as well that their colors show. Do what you want........and leave other guys alone to do what they want. You see a lack of restraint.........I see an expression of free will.

Nature taking it's course...........I'm ok with that. Who's to say that number would have been any different if you had only shot fewer young bucks?

Germ is the only one here that is smart enough to look at the middle ground. Both sides need to step back and realize we are never all going to agree.
Horn Porn has done more to divide deer hunters than every thing else combined.

There is a middle ground if you want to hunt big bucks hunt them but S.T.F.U. when your neighbor is happy with his six point.
If you want to kill every doe you see , go for it but don't tell me I'm not doing my part when I don't shoot any.

Some thing elseis how guilty some of you feel about the shape of the deer herds in your area. You all say listen to the biologist but aren't they the very ones that have been wrong so many times in the past. [:-]

To listen to you guys talk about your "mission" for hunting this season and I don't feel many of you have any ideahow to just go out and enjoy a day in the woods deer hunting. Its about having fun.

You manage a business and you hunt deer!!!!!!!!!!!

The deer have gotten buy just fine before you herd managers got here and they will do just fine when your gone.[&:][][8D]

QDM is not just about bucks, just bigger ones Does Atlas think Does

That was not the issue, it was not shooting the does. Man you have bucks on the mind

The deer eating themselves out of there winter yarding areas was the real issue. We found TB and band feeding deer, now the over populated(but healthy) deer herd was on it's own.

Don't dimissed management pratice based on your fears and bias. Look at the big picture, we should have here. Look past the yahoos and do what is best for your area and local deer herd.

I believe there is middle ground Atlas, we just need to put down are bias and work together.

For example a 3 point MARS(one side)means in the last 20 years you would have not shot 1 deer. Is that correct?

I agree with you atlas. I don't see how anyone can measure the health of a deer heard by weight alone without knowing the age of each and every deer they have seen.

In my hunting area they have started a herd reduction because they think they have too many deer. Now I see multiple bucks as well ranging from button bucks to absolute monsters and not only a couple. This leads me to believe that even though there are too many deer (according to wildlife officials) the numbers have no effect on sizes of antlers. All the deer I have shot were very fat so I can not see how they are not healthy.

Older mature deer become very wary and are very hard to pattern/find. So to alot of hunters it is probably easy to convince them that they don't have enough "healthy deer" when in some cases they just never see them.

Would not effect mine much since for the most part, I choose to wait for and OLDER buck (not always, but mostly) and fill the freezer with the 2 to6
doe tags we can get.The 3/side would actually increase the pressure on the aprox 50% of our 1 1/2 yo bucks that meet or exceed this standard. Counter productive and leads to hi grading - which cannot be argued as healthy.

Doe tags hear are given based on pop densities in the ind wmu's - some give few or none al the way to others where 2 are expected and you can get 2 additional signed over to you. This is with your big game (gun/reg season) license. Buy a bow/mz license and get an additional either sex and antler less.

The hunters who statewide mar would hurtare the gun only guys who don't get drawn for a doe tag. Severely limits what they can shoot - in a couple years of no opportunities, they will drop out and our numbers drop. Also affected are the reg season hunters who may only get out opening day and maybe Thanksgiving morning - severely restrict their chances of shooting a deer and we start to loose them as well. These 2 groups make up a significant % of our total numbers - numbers needed to protect our seasons. I don't want to lose even one of them because I want to restrict them only to the way I hunt.

Just my thoughts
Steve

Whew Atlas, I'm glad you finally got to me, I was feeling left out

ok this is going to be long

No one is telling you that, but that is all you hear. An individual deer can be fine and well fed, but the health of the overall herd could be in severe jeopardy due to overbrowsing and you end up with a crash like Germ has shown. Also something to look at is fawn recruitment rates, something PA is studying hard. Healthy deer in a good habitat produce a lot of fawns.(per deer)A lot of deer in a poor habitat don't. (per deer)

That's why I said later that we have the ability to restrict harvests and match up the populations with the habitat, so that our impacts can still leave a healthy more balanced herd.

The biologists, and the deer. Biologists research natural deer herds and then translate the numbers into bag limits etc.

Carefull going down that road. Someone jacklighting deer may argue thier expression of "free will".

bawana's quote
No, the biologists hands were tied because of the pressure put on them by hunters wanting lots of targets of opportunity. Only recently have some had the nads to tell the hunters they were wrong.

My bio explained this to me when we spoke of ratios. I AGREE!

Bawana.....I look at it like a farmer planitng a crop of tobacco. YES....when I was growing up and raising tobacco....we had the end in mind. The harvest...and what that brought to our family. But I can tell you that I took a special pride in setting plant beds.....tansferring plants....treating for suckers....and the various stages of flu-cured tobacco harvesting. The "journey" was as fulfilling, to me, as the final destination.

I will enjoy my journey (as it relates to deer management) for the next few years. Of that I have no doubts. When it's all said and done (herd is more in balance.....and reduced)....I will have had a blast along the way.

agree 100%

As I understand it.....this is nature's way of keeping the herd in check. I've noticed a drop-off in doe/fawn sightings, this season.....which leads me to believe a critical time for the herd I hunt is upon me.