bald9eagle

You are missing what I am saying. The fact that you want to hunt mature bucks is fine. It is the obsession with antlers that makes many people into poachers.

Here is a fine example. Coming home one day with my dad we see a really nice buck chasing a doe in a field near my house. now my dad isn't your typical poacher in the sense that you are saying. He wouldn't shoot a deer just to shoot a deer.

Now this particular deer made him start questioning if he had his .22 rifle in the tool box or not! Would he have shot it? I can't answer that honestly but I can bet you he would have hardly touched the brakes on a doe or bunch of little guys.

Does your being a mature hunter cause poaching? Of course not. Does the temptation of taking a huge racked deer make a poacher? Sure it does.

I have even heard that game wardens couldn't use racks too large on decoys because it was considered entrapment or something like that.

My point is that the desire of taking monster bucks (that is largely driven my mass media) can cause a lot of folks to see only horn.

I'm not knocking your desire to take only mature bucks nor am I saying that it makes you a poacher. I do want to you to think about it though and ask yourself what would you do if a monster buck was standing in your headlights with your rifle or bow in the seat next to you. I've had to answer that question once before and watch a big 3 1/2 year old 7 point cross the road slowly at 25 yards.

SwampCollie

You can only kill a deer once. Might as well shoot him when he is big. Plenty of does with a liberal bag limit and season around to fill the freezer with.

rockport

I apologize if I "missed what your saying" but I said this.

"I don't feel like placing my attention on rack size is in any way even remotely related to poaching or wasting meat."

and you responded with this

"It absolutely is."

I don't have to think about it. I see monster bucks in my headlights relatively regularly with a gun in the truck and don't even consider shooting them.

I am a hunter. I do it for the hunt and I did it before it was cool because it is and always has been my passion.Friday I rattled in a 130ish 8 point to about 6 feet from my tree and Saturday I had a 140ish 10 point almost bump my ladder it was awesome for me. I didn't have to shoot them and show them off for it to make me very happy. Sometimes I don't get a buck at all. I'll always shoot quite a few does and I almost always have a tag left over because if its hunting season I'm going to hunt and sometimes holding a tag until the last day means eating a tag. I'm not looking to get out there,kill something, and come home. I do shoot mature bucks that don't have huge racks sometimes.

I'm not going to lie its not all about the meat for me. Just the gas money I spend chasing these things could buy me a cow.

A couple years ago I passed a nice buck with just a few hours on the hunting season clock. It didn't bother me. I enjoyed it anyway and I got the rush just from being there. Then with about 20 minutes on the clock I took a beast of a buck. One eye,scars all over...the king of the deer woods. You could almost feel his presence when he showed up. He moved different,he acted different and he looked different. He was the alpha and the other deer moved away as he approached. He had a good set of horns but that was just a bonus for me and I would have taken him anyway.

It may seem weird but that is the experience I want and you don't get that from a truck window.

PKhunterCT

I'm a meat hunter. I normally will let spikes and fork horns walk, but here in Connecticut, the deer population is so nuts, that you can take 4 deer with a bow 2 either sex and 2 does in most of the state. in Zones 11 and 12 basically the entire coast line, and Fairfield county, Bow hunters on private land can take an additional 2 in January. haven' kept score but there is an earn a buck, and replacement tags in those 2 zones as well. If one were to hunt all the legitimate seasons (firearms included) the total is in the neighborhood of 14 deer a season! Needless to say, finding mature deer in southern CT is not a good bet. Don't get me wrong, there are a some but extremly few and far between.

olsaltydog

I'm a meat hunter. Will I pass on smaller does and bucks. Sure, as a matter of fact that's all I have seen so far this season. Think the 8 pointer in the neighborhood got taking. This Saturday will be my last hunt in one particular zone. If the 8 doesn't show I will most likely take the 6'er and move on. Got other spots to get to. Same applies to fishing. Sooner I get my fish the better. I don't mind spending the day doing catch and release but that's all after I got my limit.

hunter2co

Kill the maturest buck around and kill does for the meat.

bald9eagle

Ahhhhh...... I see where the misunderstanding is. I was saying that the chase for big racks was often a cause of poaching, not you specifically. I also had to go back and edit my last post. I said my dad WOULD shoot deer just to shoot deer and that was supposed to be WOULDN'T.

See, I'm not knocking your passion for chasing mature bucks. My point was more that the obsession with big racks is the cause for a lot of the things we do as outdoorsmen and wildlife managers. I'm still trying to wrap my head around the idea that letting a good 2 1/2 or 3 1/2 year old buck live improves your deer herd.

You can't deny though that there are tons of folks out there that would fall to the temptation of seeing a big buck standing just off the road.

BTW, Nice buck.

rockport

I don't see how taking a strong healthy buck out of the herd before or just into his prime can be great for a herd.

When I sit out there for hours watching these animals the young bucks that temp me are the strong healthy ones and I get the impression that they are very important to the herd.

I mean sure if you go out and shoot a good healthy 2.5 year old they will be fine. There are probably more around but if you have 5 people out there hunting a piece of property and 3 of you kill off good healthy bucks before their prime that certainly can't help the herd. Start doing that every year and that old big boy dies off then what? Who is doing the breeding then?

BTW I don't look down on the way you are doing it. Its all about you enjoying your experience and things are probably very different where you and I hunt.

fatneck65

For me that is a complicated question,,, I would love to hunt mature bucks all the time,,, wait but hunting in the places I have to hunt I don't have the luxury to wait to long for a decent buck to come along. So when I hunt around the house, I meat hunt, when I go down to south Ga. I hunt 1 choice buck for meat and then 4 on one side and try to get 16 inches width. That is why I am going to broaden my horizons next season and venture to Southern Illinois to around Eddyville and really sit for a mature buck. Any help or suggestions,,and it does not have to be specific, I can find my way around the deer woods, will be appreciated. Thanks for a great post

bald9eagle

That's probably the best reason I have ever heard for taking older bucks. The issue I have had with the line of thinking is that all you really need for a "healthy" herd are males, females, and good habitat. Fact of the matter is that does are getting bred by all manner of age classes of bucks. If you believe that only 4 1/2 or older bucks are doing all the breeding you would be mistaken.

I know this is where someone will come in and bring up doe/buck ratio. The ONLY way to know with 100% certainty that you have the doe/buck ratio that you are looking for is to high fence the place. Even then if you are taking only older bucks it is giving your younger bucks more opportunities. The age class of those younger bucks can be anywhere from 1.5 years of age and up.

Now don't misunderstand me, I'm not trying to advocate that we start making younger bucks a priority. Heck I would let small bucks go myself. I just have never liked the attitude you get from some folks if you show them a picture of your 110 class 3.5 year old buck. We all enjoy hunting and I have been a "to each his own" kind of guy with most forms of hunting. We get attacked enough to fight amongst ourselves about the age of deer we take.