Kybuckhunter

Thats something I can respect fully. It should be up to each person to decide what they want from hunting and not be treated like scum from fellow hunters.

wilk

i couldnt agree more, i hunt on state gamelands and believe me, there is no picking out funnels etc.. or passing a small 6 or 8 pointer, , but its a form of entertainment, and i watch them now and again, i dont take to much of it to heart, my lord with all the informercials you would have to be a millionare to have all the equipment and such for food plots and everything else they have, but more power to them as long as they are having fun, thats what its all about...

UPHunter08

Yep, and that was my point. For those of you hunting on your 400 acre farm, more power to you if you're able to enforce your own rules (and even better if your neighbors agree with you and follow them too). For most of us that hunt either small private parcels or public land, however, we don't have the liberty of making the choices that big landowners can make. I can obviously choose to pass up the 6 pointer that gives me a perfect broadside shot at 15 yards, but I also know full well that the guy 300 yards away will eventually take him if I don't. If I've seen larger deer in the area, I'll let him go. If it's been really slow, I'll probably take the shot.

We've even tried to follow QDM strategies on our 160-acre piece of property up north (gun season), and it's made no difference in buck age or quality. Why? Every one of the neighbors knocks down the first thing that walks by. That's not to say that I'll take out a spike or fork, but after several years of never seeing a 140-class buck, you learn to lower your standards if you want to fill a tag. It's that simple. That probably won't change until the local hunting culture changes (or mandatory regulations are developed).

Point is, for many of us, those hunting shows are total fantasy because we're not able to have the options and choices that they do, so we're forced to be more realistic if we want to fill a tag. And there are many years that I don't fill a buck tag (if I want meat I can take a doe). That's all I meant.

nctaxi

I hunt from 10 acres to 50 acre parcels and game lands and I pass anything that isn't at least 3.5 yrs. The rule about being outside the ears is because my son & my buddy and his son cannot age deer, so basically outside the ears.The sons have a free pass but I encourage them to make it better than their last deer. But I can't let MY decisions be based on someone else's decisions. I used tohunt with the "shoot or someone else will" mentality , eventually I got over it. When I see a neighbor with a deer I passed and mention that "Oh yea I passed him earlier this year" and they ask why. After my explanation that you will never kill a big deer by shooting mediocre deer, they change their viewpoint. Now some of the neighbors are changing their viewpoints. But it has to start somewhere.

UPHunter08

Well, indirectly they are though in many cases. If I had to wait for a 3.5 year old deer, I'd probably only shoot one buck per decade in one area that I hunt. That's how I came up with the 6-pt or greater criteria that I use there. I can still pressure the neighbors into not shooting spikes and forks by advertising that rule, so it is indeed starting somewhere. The number of wolves, poor quality habitat and harsh winters also contribute to the relatively low number of quality deer in that area (western UP of Michigan), so you have to be realistic and set your standards accordingly IMO. I'd love to limit myself to 140+, but I don't want to wait 10-15 years between filling tags!

Contrast this with where I bow hunt farther south...there I can realistically set a higher standard for bucks.

That's the point of this thread IMO: every hunter should set his own standards and not be pressured by unrealistic hunting shows.