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But yet I passed on legal bucks, knowing and accepting that they very well may be taken by other hunters,

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ORIGINAL: bluebird2

You passed on those legal bucks simply because you thought they did not meet your high standards and you wouldn't be able to brag about them to your buddies. You did not do it for the good of the herd or the future of the sport of hunting.

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I'm going hunting now,and when I return I will check into how manytimes you can fit blah..blah into a rambling senseless responce how only you and your merry men can save the PA spike from eventual extermination.

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ORIGINAL: livbucks



That could be your problem right there. You are locked in on old ways of stump sitting and letting others force the unnatural movement of deer past you. I have finally put together your anger issue with the GC. Less deer means less effective (fun) stump sitting. And now there are less hunters as well. This is really throwing a monkey wrench into your way of taking advantage of other hunters and an overpopulated herd. The new improved way requires hunting now. That means you need to get up and go find deer. That is very uncomfortablefor you, isn't it? Like anybody that has been receiving entitlements, when it is taken away, the result is extreme unconsolable anger.

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That could be your problem right there. You are locked in on old ways of stump sitting and letting others force the unnatural movement of deer past you. I have finally put together your anger issue with the GC. Less deer means less effective (fun) stump sitting

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ORIGINAL: bluebird2

That is pretty funny when you consider that I have been the designated driver for our group for over 30 years. I would much rather walk to locate game and try to out smart rather than sit 20 ft. up in a tree to try to ambush one. The definition of hunting is the pursuit of game, not waiting for the game to come to you.

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Age can also effect a buck’s antlers. Whitetailed deer do not achieve maturity until they are 5 to 8 years of age. Studies have demonstrated the average buck achieves only about 10 percent of his potential antler development by age 1.5 years (when he completes his first set of antlers as an 18-month-old buck).

It has also been able to demonstrate that there is little relationship between the first year antlers and the antler development a buck will have when he reaches the mature age classes of 5 years or older. This means a spike-antlered buck has a good chance of becoming a trophy-quality adult buck. By the time a buck has completed his second set of antlers he still only has achieved only 25-35 percent of his potential antler development.

At 3 years of age (few bucks live longer than this in Pennsylvania because of the amount of hunters that hunt in this state). A buck still only has achieved about 50 percent of his potential antler quality. It is not until 5 years of age that most bucks approach their full antler potential, and often, antlers don’t reach their maximum size until 7 or 8 years of age (for captive deer raised under ideal conditions).

Probably less than 1 out 5,000 bucks would survive to the 6-year-old age class with the hunters that hunt in Pennsylvania. It is no wonder we don’t see the quality of bucks that existed when my grandfather hunted the exact same woods, when hunting pressure was very low compared to today. Two other factors that effect a buck’s antler development are injury and disease.
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ORIGINAL: Windwalker7

Food for thought here.


Has anyone here heard the term "managment buck"?

It probably originated in Texas. We've all seen those big racks on those hunting shows.

It seems that here in PA, we do everything bass akwards.

In Texas, they shoot the inferior bucks and let the bucks with potential grow.

Here in PA, we shoot the nicer bucks and let the smaller ones grow.

If you had two yearling bucks, one carrying 8 points and one a spike, guess which one is legal in PA.

We kill the buck with better genes and allow the spike to continue on.

Now, I have to admit that there are nicer bucks in PA because they get to get older, but down the road, you have to wonder how things will be.

I'm not sure if the ranch owners in Texas would like the idea of shooting off all the huge racked bucks and letting small bucks walk.

Just imagine what it would be like if the PGC decided to change the rules. If they said that for the next 3 years, the only legal buck in Pa would be spikes and fork horns.Anything bigger is off limits.

What do you think PA's buck situation would be like after 3 years of this?

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Remember, most experts agree that ARs are the worse method for improving the buck age structure , but Alt and the PGC didn't care. they needed a carrot to get hunters to shoot more doe ,they implemented ARs anyway,despite the known negative effects.

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I actually despise sitting on stand for endless hours without seeing anything.

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I actually prefer pursuing the game I harvest rather than ambushing them from 20 Ft. up in a climbing stand, which at times i consider to be more like poaching then hunting.

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Most multi-season hunters (bow/gun/flintlock) are indeed happy with AR. Most exclusively rifle/shotgun season hunters are unhappy with AR.

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It is silly to keep bringing up that point restrictions are the worst way to age a buck population. Increasing the age structure of bucks is good and the only way to accomplish that in PA is through countable point restrictions.

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If you changed the rules and made it only spikes and forkies then you would end up with no bucks older than 1.5, just like the old days. All a hunter would need do is wack excess points off with a hammer to make it legal.

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Now thats what I call funny and shows you know even less than I thought you did. Did you ever try to break of a point? Do you know what a freshly broken point looks like? Are you one of those guys that would shoot a big 8 pt. just so he could break off the points with a hammer? I know I would never thought of such a brilliant plan.

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ORIGINAL: fellas2

Once again livbucks is speaking out for all the hunters out there.Please sir,refrain from making the statement once again that "most multi-season hunters are indeed happy with AR and most exclusively rifle/shotgun hunters are happy with AR unless you have proof positve that that is the case.It is possible that you and your buddies are, but please do not speak for entire hunting population because I and many of my hunting companions and other hunters I know have a diffent opinion of such programs.

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I have also found dead buck that you couldn't kick off the antlers no matter how hard you tried.

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Its odd the everyone says that genetics doesn't play a very big role on rack size. yes, nutrition and age are very important.

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ORIGINAL: livbucks

The digest is not the complete wildlife code, and ignorance of the law is not a defense.

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ORIGINAL: bluebird2

I didn't make any reference to the Hunting Digest and I have a complete copy of the wildlife code, do you?

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Bluebird you are indeed delusional. With the exception of a flawed study from Mississippi, the experts position is quite the opposite. Including but not limited to:
Dr Kroll
Dr Samuel
Dr Rosenberry
Dr Alt
Charles Alsheimer
Virtually every officer, biologist and member of QDMA

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ORIGINAL: bluebird2


All of those experts ,except Alt ,prefer a spread restriction to a point restriction. They also support not shooting any 1.5 bucks or culling bucks before they are 2.5 or 3.5. In PA we are reverse culling our bucks in all age classes ,which is the exact opposite of what those experts recommend.

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Actually ALL of these experts favor a spread restriction including Gary Alt. Gary Alt characterized the point count as a less preferable but more workable compromise when instituting the, then revolutionary, changes to a state with 900,000 hunters.

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They also all agree that instituting part or thier principles are better than none as we are now doing in PA.

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ORIGINAL: bluebird2


So are you saying that they all agree that implementing APRS which result in decreased antler size ,is a good idea?

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If Alt preferred a spread restriction he would have tried to implement it, but he didn't. Instead he choose APRs and lied about their effects. He mis represented the results from the research done in Miss, which proved ARs caused a decrease in rack size and make ridiculous claims abot the number of buck that would be saved and how it would double or triple the number of 8 pts.

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The Miss results are flawed at best and have virtually no relevance in PA. Miss was haervesting less than 2 does PSM during the study period under significantly different density and habitat than Pennsylvania.

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ORIGINAL: bluebird2

The part of the Miss. study that was flawed were the computer models that predicted that high grading would not occur either in Miss. or PA. The results from the statewide harvest surveys proved that the computer model was flawed and rack sizes of 2.5+ buck decreased statewide. Dr. kroll's study also confirms the results from Miss. since spikes develop at a slower rate than Y's, which would produce smaller 2.5 buck than in a non-AR herd.

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Few have studied the antler restriction issue more than Pennsylvania ’s Dr. Gary Alt. His conclusions led to a statewide antler point restriction in 2002.

“What we are trying to do is have a more natural antlered-buck-to-adult-doe-ratio and a more natural breeding ecology. We feel that reducing the number of adult does and increasing the antlered buck population is in the best interest of the deer resource,” he explains.

“Scientists told us that to fix our Pennsylvania problem we needed to save half of our yearling bucks. This is why we collected information on 73,000 bucks in the four years prior to antler restrictions. We learned that in order to save half of the yearling bucks, the majority of counties in Pennsylvania needed to restrict the harvest of bucks with fewer than three points on a side. Had we not done the research on our yearlings, we wouldn’t have known this.”

“Prior to antler restrictions, only about 50,000 Pennsylvania bucks survived the state’s annual deer season, and just one in one hundred survived to age four. With antler restrictions, we’ve been able to save 75,000 to 100,000 bucks the first year.

“Launching 75,000 to 100,000 bucks into the next age class tripled the number of bucks age two or older,” notes Alt. “This tripled the number of bucks with eight or more points in just one year, so a by-product of antler restrictions is that hunters have been able to see more and bigger bucks. To offset the killing of less bucks we knew we needed to harvest more does by the same number and we’ve tried hard to accomplish this.”

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At this point, IMHO, it would make sense to go to a spread restriction but even now, 6 years after AR, I encountered an out of state hunter proudly dragging a 2x2 out in 2F on opening day this year. The oh sh!t look on his face when I told him his buck was illegal shows that there are still hunters out there that have difficulty handling any AR let alone able to judge a spread measurement. (BTW, he seemed sincere when he agreed to turn in the mistake and pay his $25)

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