hoosierhunter_06

here it goes. i live in indiana and the one buck rule hasn't made a whole lot of diffrence in the deer heard i think just my opinion. well in the early to mid 1990's the dnr put in place that you could take a buck in any season and one in firearm. now with the one buck rule one buck and it doesn't matter what season. so far this year and ever since the rule was put in place deer vehicle accedents ar up this year alone i have saw at least 576 deer hit 75% of them where bucks which could have been nice bucks latter on this fall. but this fall should be the final year for the rule. what do you guys think about this. i think we need to put a management buck for the second buck like texas some what has.

pittbull

The earn a buck idea would probably work better there... Make hunters harvest 2 does before a buck can be taken...

farm hunter

It was like this in NY for many many years.

1 Buck - period.

If there are LOTS of hunters and a limited number of deer - I'm all for a 1 buck rule. Probably that is the case in IN. A "management buck" works in TX - because there is alow hunter/deer ratio - I suspect IN is not that way at all.

FH

answerguy

I really have a problem believing that 75% of the deer you are seeing dead on the roadside are bucks.

kevin1

Indiana's hunter population is approximately 300,000 , and they took a record number of deer last year. Twelve of our lower tier counties have been declared "reduction counties" because we don't take nearly enough antlerless deer down here . An "Earn a Buck" program has been proposed many times to help reduce the deer population , but repeatedly fails due to heavy resistancefrom the same trophy obsessed hunting clubs who got us stuck with the OBR for a 5 year trial because they want a booner behind every tree instead of simply hunting where the booners are . Indiana is #6 in the P&Y standings , so we already have lots of big deer , but we also suffer from having too many deer in general for the carrying capacity .

I have seen the same thing he has , more than half of the road killed deer I see are bucks , usually younger ones. The OBR has forced many of our hunters to be more selective and let the little dumb ones walk . Take a guess what many of them end up walking in front of ...

bigbuckOO

I dont really like or dislike the OBR, what i dont like though is certain groups trying to push their agenda on me. Technically, the OBR makes no difference to me, as i normally only take 1 buck anyway. But i dont like the way people are put down as "rednecks" on some Indiana sites for shooting an immature deer. That isnt right and thats the mentality the OBR has helped create. I do get a kick though reading how some guys drool over the OBR, becuase in my area, i have not see one bit of improvement in deer size and i pass up several yearling bucks each year. Maybe i just need a new place to hunt, but then again, i could have shot a trophy deer years ago with the 2 buck limit if i had the right place to hunt. When i start seeing big bucks on the property i hunt, maybe i will give some credit to the OBR, but im not going to give it any credit for making big bucks even bigger on land that has always had trophy deer.

kevin1

Indiana's OBR is still young , so the research numbers haven't all been crunched yet , and it will be a year or two before they are . So far , according to the annual harvest stats the promised age shift hasn't occured , which was one of the principle selling points . I keep an informal track of what I see , and I'm not seeing the "booner behind every tree" that the chest thumpers are drooling for , in fact I'm seeing more does than ever . Hell , if all I wanted was a booner all I have to do is go in deeper where they've been the whole time . Cruise a mile or better into any stretch of the Hoosier Natl. Forest or any of the larger state forests and you'll see some world class bucks . It's the lazy ones and head hunters who think this farce is gonna work , meat hunters like me just sit back and watch the antlerless bag go up every year because of them . Gotta love that !

yeoman

Chances are the One Buck Rule does very little to change things. Here in Maryland, and probably virtually everywhere else, 76% of deer hunters only kill one deer a year when the license allows them a dozen or more. When polled on why they only kill one deer, the overwhelming reason they give is that "one deer is all I can use". A One Buck Rule would have no effect on this group.

9piont

I just moved from Ohio to Indiana last November.
The difference in the dear is amazing. I have not seen any deer that would come close to the size of the deer in Ohio.
I think Indiana has 2 problems:
1- to many deer per square mile in many areas
2- 5 weeks or more of gun hunting (during the peak rut) takes way to many young deer out of the herd

I believe they should move the gun season out of the rut and increase the # of doe tags. In the county I hunt in in Kentucky you could take unlimited does last year, I took my biggest buck ever from there last year.
See the pic below.

9piont

Here is the buck i shot in Indiana.