What is the opinion on culling out spike bucks. I have heard several different ideas about improving the heard.

I have 100 acres to hunt, which butts up to 770 acres of county park that no one is supposed to hunt. We are implementing a six point and bigger rule. This is the fourth year of it, and wow! what a difference we have seen in the amount of buck plus the quality. But that problem of shooting scrubs and spikes keeps arising. We are noticing that there are a few more spikes than I thought should be there. Is the nutrition not high enough or is it genetics. Do we shoot them so they don't breed? Or should we "Let them go, so they can Grow"

Questions?????

If you have a lot of decent buck and a lot of doe to boot then I feel it may be a good idea to cull some of the spikes, there are a lot of theory's about whether spikes are due to genetics or lack of nutrition. I think you should base the decision you make on the over all size of the herd and your buck to doe ration, if the herd is to large or the ration is out of whack I would cull some spikes.

The Tazman aka Martin Price
Founder and President of
Virginia Disabled Outdoorsmen Club

I would also base my decision on the body size of the spike. We see alot of small bodied spikes where we hunt and will let them walk. Our thinking is that these are fairly young bucks with good potential in a year or two. We do try to cull out large bodied spikes feeling that these lack the genetics of developing a respectable rack. I could be wrong but after 3 years of doing it this way we are starting to see some nicer bucks.

Why kill first year bucks born late in the season?Now if you are talking cow horns(bucks with stright antlers and brow tines)shoot to kill!I have one with my name on it I missed last year.

Hunting is not a sport,it's a lifestyle.

I agree with Ballistictip,if by the 2nd or 3rd year they haven't grown some sort of rack....they never will.Leave the youngsters alone,a spike one year can change dramatically in his second.Good luck...

According to a game biologist friend the spikes we have are usually just yearlings . The second year they will be forked or better depending on the feed . Once in awhile one will remain a spike but it is pretty rare .

I read something awhile ago that said a young deer's 1st couple of years his nutritional needs are devoted to skeletal and musculature developement.After that,when his his body is developed,it shifts to antler development.I don't know if that's true or not,but I prefer to pass on the little ones anyway.

Let them go so they may grow. The majority of spikes are just immature bucks.

I have this problem. I have many spikes who are 3 and 4 years old. Great big deer with great big spikes. I need to clear some out but in my county we have a one buck limit. If I waste my tag on a spike I will not be able to hunt a buck with a nice rake. In my county I can shoot two doe and one buck. I shoot my doe during bow season and save my buck for rifle season. I wait for the one I want. I do need to clean up some of the genetics on my land but am reluctant to do so. Im afraid I will end up with a gene pool dominated by huge spikes.

"Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity" Martin Luther King Jr.

Our club last night had a deer biologist come and go over our DMAP program and give us the data of what we killed last year. We give weight and jaw bones and horn diameter and what not. It is nice to see the age of the deer we are killing and the avg. antler growth year by year. That same question came up and he said that studies show that a spike is just a younge deer that mybe was born late and will most likely grow bigger horns. No a cow horn or a deer with two points that grow more then 10 to 12 inches long and kinda curl are most likely never going to be anything but a cow horn and he suggest we do take them out of the gene pool.