they are not worth a buck tag to me

I disagree. IMO genetics has little to do with it in the avg area. Maybe in an area with intense QDM going on...but for the avg joe's hunting area, the major cause IMO is being late born. Buck doe ratios are out of whack, and does get bred late, some really late. All the young bucks development is geared towards his body the first year of his life, thus leaving little left for antler developement at 1.5. He started off behind the 8 ball so to speak, and will take a couple years to catch up.

Ditto what Rack said.

Letem walk. Just because its a spike does not mean it will have an inferior rack.
If the deer is obviously an old deer and has cowhorn spikes then shoot it.
Alot of spikes are a result of young does giving birth and not having enough milk at first. Its been proven time and time again that spikes can and do develop good racks in later years.

Here in western Washington the deer population isn't the greatest in the world nor do we have actual defined herds that "culling" would even be a consideration. We only get to take 1 deer a year and it has to be a buck unless you get drawn for a doe tag. We only get 2 weeks a year to hunt and most truthfull hunters will tell you a spike walks for the 1st week but anything goes the second week.

Let em walk, set your sights on maturity as opposed to rack. Funny though maturity and rack go hand n hand, taking a 4.5 year old dink is good management, taking 1.5 year old dink is not! You must allow the animal to develop, you just never know.

i'll let them walk if they are lil , lil...we have a 5 in. law here....i have taken 2 spikes, the first was a cowhorn, both tines were like 10 inches, he was 2.5 yrs. old, the other was the last weekend of my quota hunt and i had no meat...if i would of had meat , i would of let him walk and grow, but like my first, he was 2.5 yrs. old so it was good to take him because he probably would of never had a huge rack....the other one, well i was desperate, but we have the 50 50 thing going on , for every buck taken ,take a doe, we had 57 does taken and 57 bucks.....so it owrked out...but i would pefer to let them go, but i needed meat.....i also hunt public land that is hunted pretty hard and you're lucky to see a deer , a racked buck, well that is even better.....

I wouldn't feel bad about shooting a spike.

do dont see much bucks and anything over 1 1/2 years is dead

I would really like to say let them walk, BUT my freezer neeeded some help so i shot a spike this past season. tasted goood too.

We try and let them walk but we are getting spikes alot bigger now for some reason. Here is one picture of a spike from last year caught with my game camera, you think he needs to be shot or let him grow?