antler point restrictions

Where I hunt deer, our gang has been practicing what we call HERD MANAGEMENT. If you want meat shoot dry does,spikes and forks,leave the basket racks alone. If you want to shoot a buck it should be larger than anything you have ever shot. My biggest buck is 156, so I have to wait for the 160 class to show up. The club advocates VOLUNTARY RESTRAINT. We are in farm country and our gang is made up of neighbors who have hunted together for 5 generations. We control about 3000 acres , and in the midst of it is a public hunting area.
The other neighbors and hunting gangs saw the success we were having and started to use the idea. This morphed into a deer hunting club of sorts. We get together in the winter and have a coyote hunting contest with 3 cash prizes.
During the rifle season we don't have a big buck contest. We only have a big doe contest. The entry fee is $25 , $20 goes to the contest and $5 dollars goes to the annual hunter banquet. entry fees for hunters under 17 years old are paid by the club and they pay $5 at the banquet only if they attend. There are 5 cash prizes for the big doe contest and 2 cash prizes of $50 for the 2 youngest hunters who shot a deer for that year, buck or doe.
For the experienced hunters if you shoot a buck you get disqualified from the big doe contest. There is an average of over 70 entries in the contest. The prize money is split between the hunter and the landowner 50/50.
After the season is over we have a hunters banquet. Wives and families are invited and charged $5 a head at the door, under 6 free. Those who got nice deer generally bring their horns to show off. Deer stories old and new are told and a couple members are musicians so there is good music. We have door prizes donated and several gun raffles and good times had by all. Some land owners don't hunt but sign up just for the social event. They ask hunters who hunt their land to join the club. We now cover 2 townships of participating members. I have a 40 X 56 shop where we hold the banquet and its getting full. Each year we pick up a few more hunters
We don't have any APR by the state and I personally don't agree with them. We have young hunters eager to draw blood, so let them draw blood. We have old hunters who don't get many chances to shoot deer so let them shoot a basket rack or fawn if they want to.
My belief is that primarily the #1 important thing is that its about deer hunting and having a pleasant experience. I've learned that a lot of trophies don't have to have big horns. I can tell by the smiles when they show of the animal and tell the stories. That trophy smile tells it all.
#2 important thing is herd health, dry does need to be taken and the population cannot be more than the habitat can support. Without adequate food, large horns can't be grown. And does don't produce fawns. Up north in a bad winter the does absorb the fawn they are carrying if the food supply is bad, result is no fawn crop.
#3 is antler management. If the herd is healthy, and food is adequate, the horns come. During a hard cold winter the alpha bucks are the first to die because they come into the winter with no fat reserves. That is due to all of the energy they spend during the rut chasing does. This is where that basket rack is important because he may well be next years alpha buck
We have a very healthy herd, and there is a good number of big bucks being seen and shot.
Different areas require different management tactics. I am no expert by any means but I do see that what we are doing is having positive results. In our agriculture environment this system works. For the most part we are all neighbors or know each other and as a result its been fairly easy to get all on board with the idea. Where there is a lot of public land in large tracts it would be difficult. We have public land here also but its waterfowl production areas that 40 to 160 acres. But in the Big Woods it would be hard or impossible to get all the hunters together. Thats where hunters want the state to step in with APR restrictions. This makes for not to enjoyable hunts for young hunters and old hunters.
My complaint is that the Fish & Game depts. are involved in to much BS politics from the legislatures who are making decisions based on lobbyist money instead of sound science. There the problem lays. As a hunter we need to get politically active and let the SOB's know what we want.
 
Why would I take a picture of a spike, 4, or 6 point?
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For documentation...........We age..weight..take pics of all mature bucks(especially if it were genetically inferior)....
Like I said before..after 20 years of this..we just don't find these kind of bucks that are not just young bucks....Not saying it never happens..it's just rare....

I live in a county that has had a good population of deer on the East side for many years(because of larger tracts and rougher inaccessible terrain).....
The rest of the county had areas that the deer herd was almost completely wiped out(folks shot anything with horns)....Since cutting back to a one buck county..populations have replenished....We are now a 2 buck county now and with antler restrictions the quality of the bucks being harvested has raised dramatically....

Lucas..that sounds awesome! We do a lot of the same things....We have a county-wide elected Game management assoc....Big shin-dig..prizes and such....Shoulder-mounted deer are displayed that were harvested the previous year....Everyone is getting into management and cooperating with the TPWD on strengthening the quality of the herd....Young folks(our future) show up in droves....
 
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Minor disagreements aside, I am glad to see this topic come up. I was beginning to think I was the Lone Contrarian or something.
 
Originally posted bySarge: Minor disagreements aside, I am glad to see this topic come up.
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Same here. While we may not all agree, the exchange of ideas and information is what these forums are about. One thing is for sure. There is too much factual information out there that one should not make a judgement on this based on myth, old wives tales and the expertise of armchair biologist/game managers.

In an area where there is good habitat, you will NEVER shoot all the mature bucks. If it doesn't happen in areas without ARs, why would it in areas with ARs? Mature bucks are harder to find and to harvest. That's how they and their genes survive and have survived for a coupla centuries here in the U.S. Saying that ARs deplete the gene pool is not based on fact. The larger racked bucks will always be the dominate ones and will always do the majority of the breeding. A local bar runs a two "big buck" contests every year. One is based on weight, the other on rack. They get good numbers of entries, generally over a hundred. Never in twenty years of running it has one deer won both. The large racked deer are always substantially lighter than smaller racked deer come deer season, not because they used all that energy and fat reserves to grow horn, but because they were doing the majority of the fighting and breeding. The heavier bucks, altho most have good racks, were not the dominate bucks tho and did little breeding, less fighting and more eating during the rut. This is how the good Lord designed it. Do small scrub horns breed? Sure they do, even now to a small degree in areas of non ARs. Giving them the chance to grow will not change that, but it will not increase it either. Given the room, food and minerals needed, even a scrub horn @ 18 months will have a decent rack @ 5. If not, there are factors other than the gene pool at work. But odds are, they will never be the dominate buck in the area. Bucks don't need to be 5 years old to pass on their genes. They can and do at 18 months in many places. Again, this is how the big rack genes stay in the pool in areas were deer are normally shot at 18-30 months of age. Bucks aren't the only one's that contribute to the gene pool. Does donate 50% also. But even scrub horns may carry the genes for a big rack, it's just a recessive trait in them.

ARs are not a management tool in themselves. They MUST be combined with other sound deer management tools in order to be successful and to promote a healthy herd. Herd size needs to be determined by factors other than just what hunters want to see. Whether or not ARs are a sound management tool in a certain area are subjective and discretionary, but whether they are state induced or self-imposed, they must be used based on fact and knowledge. Not because Joe hasn't gotten a deer the last two years. While they do promote a larger average antler size for the total herd, they can also promote a healthier herd without shortening the season or reducing overall buck harvest.
 
Was gone for a little bit and missed some postings. I have been hunting the same areas since I was old enough to hunt. Gary Alt (Bear photographer turned "Deer expert") even admitted the first two years was a disaster. "We did not plan for that amount of button bucks being shot." The answer: Don't shoot button bucks. Real hunters are not sitting in a tree house with 80 power binoculars waiting for a deer to wander up until it can be identified. "Just because you don't see bucks does not mean there are none. " Really? Deer are big animals and leave a lot of sign. I can still show you areas where there are rubs years old and now you can barely find one. The ones you do see are made by bigger deer that are almost impossible to kill legally. I just get sick of listening to lies. I got in an argument with a Game Warden that tried to tell me that the kill report card never had Public or Private land as part of the report. That got dropped soon after the new deer policy started. Some of the state lands were beat down to hand fulls of deer and hunters were really PO. Same thing in Maryland. At Indian Springs it used to be loaded with rubs. When I quit there, you could walk all day and be lucky to see two rubs. Yeah, what a brainstorm, issue thousands of tags and hope by some miracle that the overpopulated areas (Where almost no one can hunt) will magically have the deer herd thinned down.
 
Originally posted by Gunplummer:

The answer: Don't shoot button bucks. Real hunters are not sitting in a tree house with 80 power binoculars waiting for a deer to wander up until it can be identified.
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But.....real hunters don't shoot button bucks by accident because they can easily identify them as being young of the year. You shoot this years fawn, you have a 50% chance of it bein' a buck. Real hunters in areas where there are no ARs, still must take the time to identify an animals sex before they shoot if they have a buck only tag. Spikes and pencil horns are hard to tell and sometimes take a real effort to see. How is this any different that taking the time to judge between a adult and a fawn of the year? Only "brown it's down" hunters hunt without identifying their animal first. Shoot first, look later.

Hunters need to realize they have to be responsible for their actions. Just because the F&G issues 3000 antlerless permits for that area, don't mean they have to fill them all. If they do, they don't have the F&G to blame....just themselves. If you hunt hard all season, seeing very little buck sign and finally see a small scrub, you don't think, "I better shoot it.......it might be the last one left!". You should think, I should let it walk.......it might be the last one.". Youth and new hunters should not be disappointed or scorned if they take a nice doe instead of a small buck. They need to learn that it is not a sign of being a poor hunter as when I was a kid, but the sign of a sportsman doing what's right for proper deer herd health. If deer are plentiful and pressure is light, one should not feel guilty if they fill a second antlerless tag. But if the deer are scarce and the pressure has been heavy, one needs to ask themselves what they want worse....meat this year or more deer next year. Thinkin' "if I don't shoot it, someone else will!" is only true if the other guy thinks the same as you. F&G has a hard time regulating deer numbers on private lands. As Gunplummer states, one can issue all the tags in the world and it still may be that not one doe on private land gets shot. Then slobs with itchy fingers try and fill those limitless tags on public land they can access. Funny, they're the first ones to whine when they see nuttin' a few years down the road. Hunters need to help the F&G....not just complain about it. Go to meetings and hearings on seasons and bag limits. Be vocal to those slob hunters that ruin it for everybody. Peer pressure to not shoot animals is just as powerful as the pressure to shoot something to impress your peers. Get involved with a whitetail organization to see if there's anything that needs to be done locally. Teach and inform the young and the ignorant about what it takes to make hunting better. It ain't always just about gettin' blood on your knife.
 
There's so many different ways , whose is right/ wrong? All ! There's so many differences, just do it legally. Some people ( myself ) are meat hunters , some trophy hunters, some, etc and etc.... Some bow hunters, traditional hunters ( if you really get to it a lot of them are hard core) and there's the one sitting in a 2000 dollar enclosed stand with a 10,000 dollar RTV 5000 dollar rifle, so on and so fourth. To me money has nothing to do with it. The more purer the more I like it. Respect all hunters, we need each other, got each others backs and need to recruit all we can.
 
The trouble with true "Quality Deer Management" on a state-wide scale is that a great many, I would wager most, hunters couldn't give the south bound end of a north bound rat about any of it.

They don't care what makes a good deer herd and they don't know the first thing about it.

The programs put into place by the wildlife folks have to somehow work within the ignorance of the average hunter.

There's no possible way to implement a "If it's 1 1/2 and a spike shoot it but if it's 1 1/2 and it's a 6 point don't but if it's 2 1/2 and a 6 point do shoot it..." kind of thing among 10s of thousands of hunters who don't know and don't care to learn.

Antler point restrictions are, IMO, the best of the imperfect ways to try to make things better.
 
Yep point restrictions are great for you. And me, I wouldn't are if I ever shoot another buck. All mine go straight to the freeezer.
Who's right/wrong ? Neither. We hunt for different reasons. As long as we're having fun and making memories.
 
Considering that I've killed several dozen deer and only one has been bigger than a 5 point AND I don't live in an area that has APRs, they're not "great for me". They're just the better of a bunch of imperfect ideas. The ideas have to work for the average hunter and have to be enforceable. The APRs also have no effect whatsoever on the total deer harvest, on average, unless your total deer population is low, the ratio is poor and there are very few doe tags available.

In NY state, you'd be lucky to find a place to hunt where anterless (buck and doe) don't outnumber antlered deer by 5:1. Having to let a smallish buck walk isn't likely to effect your odds of putting meat in the freezer. If you saw one antlered buck, you've probably seen or will see 5 or 8 or 15 antlerless.
 
About 50 yards behind my house is where I hunt. When my two deer feeders go off (in deer season) wait about 2 minutes and they're be about 40 deer at each feeder. I've had 160" bucks standing about 7 yards from my house before. If we walk about 200 yards through some woods in my back yard we'll come to a field about 500 acres. This evening you can sit and see about 100 deer at one single time. They'll be scattered here and there. There's about 6000 acres that joins my back fence that hasn't been hunted in over 30 years, there's thousands of acres across from me and woods on each sides of me. I've shoot more deer out my windows than most have ever killed. There's probably 170-180 class deer here that I seen and I still wouldn't give you 15 cents for one. I've shot deer out my window of house with a bow.
The question is, I hunt very different than you Brian. Would you call it hunting ? Sure, just different. If I seen a 200 class buck and a doe standing next to him, I'm fixing to be skinning a doe !

So many people think that hunting has to bring home a huge buck or spending thousands of dollars on a lease and supplies, etc. It has nothing to do with all that.
You use the word Ignorant loosely , am I ignorant because I have different views than yours ? I just like different ways to do them maybe. Enjoy you're Buck.
 
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I couldn't care less how anyone hunts, what they hunt with or what they choose to shoot, so long as it's legal. My use of the word ignorant and who it refers to is self explanatory in the context of my statement. It has nothing to do with you or any other specific individual.
 
Brian, Several years ago, I had a huge spike on my land who was the dominant buck. I looked at him several times and thought "da.. that is a huge buck." He was chasing mature bucks away. I watched a nice 8 pointer run from him. Had antler restrictions been in place where I hunt, he would have been breeding all the does on my property. My neighbor had a 11 year old kid and I told the neighbor to take him over in the field and shoot the spike. Why would I want that thing breeding the does on my hunting land? That is precisely the kind of junk Antler restrictions protect.
 
Didn't say it was the best solution but I haven't heard one better, for the masses.

Your situation... the exception that proves the rule. If that was common, it wouldn't stand out in your mind. It's not common, it's an anomaly.

In a lot of areas of NY, the doe to buck ratio is so high that ALL the bucks get to breed.
 
Brian
The area I hunt in NY is truly rural. All farmland. In addition to the APR, we are dealing with the fact that it requires at least 2 preference points to obtain a DMP for that area. This means that to all intents and purposes, if you are really lucky, you may get to take a legal deer once every three years or so.
As you are aware, a muzzleloading license permits on deer of either sex, so at least we have a chance to fill our freezers with a doe during M/L season.
The other problem is that this area is so far back of the beyond that active enforcement of game laws is, pretty much non-existant.
Most of the landowners want some venison to feed their families, and feel that they are entitled to it. I cannot, and will not, argue that point. However, most of them have a gun with them whenever they are working the fields, and venison on the hoof finds it's way into the nearest shed. You can take it from there.
Antler restrictions are nothing more than an Ideal Solution to a Non-existant problem.
Good luck this season
 
Most of the areas that I hunt are the same, nothing but farms and trees for miles around.

I have to ask myself, do the various environmental agencies in all of the various states have these "silly" rules for controlling deer populations? Not APRs specifically but bag limits, doe tags, gender restrictions, etc. Yes, they all do.
Then I ask myself, when I watch a show like The Crush with Lee and Tiffany and I see a guy who started with farm land and trees and whatever deer were there, how come HIS farm land and trees are filled with more deer than I can imagine AND monster bucks while on your farmland (and mine) we see fewer deer in a year than they do in a day and their "cull" bucks are our bucks of a lifetime?

So what's the difference? The difference is knowledge and control.

There, you have a guy (or a group) that own enough land and know enough about deer to grow and maintain a large, healthy population with proper ratios and huge bucks. Self control and knowledge. Don't let anybody lie to you either. Those guys shoot doe. They shoot PLENTY of doe. Managing a herd for big bucks doesn't stop anybody from putting meat in the freezer.

Here, we have ignorance and greed. The tags don't matter much because there's little enforcement and no self control. "If it's brown, it's down!" Tell me you don't hear that phrase 100 times every season.

APRs and all the other DEC regs have nothing, *zero*, to do with the deer population problems in your area. It's greed and ignorance.

APRs are a way to try to apply a GENERAL truth that every hunter COULD comply with that would make for a better deer herd ON AVERAGE, for the average hunter, than other methods because the uneducated (about deer biology) average hunter could not possibly hope to follow them.

It is generally true that older bucks grow bigger racks. It is generally true that bigger racked bucks are older, mature, dominant bucks. Are there exceptions? Yes. Would it be nice to be able to shoot those exceptions? Yes.

What do we get if we (in general, greedy, uncaring, uneducated hunters, not we "you and me"), can shoot small bucks? We get what we have now. "If it's brown, it's down!"

How's that working out?
 
Many times out here in the west, our game management agencies use APR not as a tool to manage the deer themselves, but as a tool to manage the hunters of those deer.

For instance, tags in many areas are general, over the counter unlimited type. As deer herds have been declining lately, Game managers have used antler point restrictions on these areas to cause the hunting pressure to decline and shift elsewhere. Many of the meat hunters chose different areas, because they just want deer meat, antler size doesn't matter.

Now, these APR can't de sustained for long periods, year after year, because the fact that they promote removal of the better quality and breeding age bucks. So, managers will institute a APR for a year or two, let the meat hunters hunt other areas, taking the pressure off the specific herd. Then after a couple years, remove the APR.

It helps, but is not the cure all. Deer management is a very complex issue and APR's are just one of the tools managers use.

More important to deer numbers and size is habitat. If the habitat is poor, it will only support a specific number of animals (herd size). If that herd size is larger than the habitat will support, the quality of each individual animal will suffer. If the habitat will support more individual animals then are present, those animals living in this under utilized habitat will be better quality. Over utilized habitat doesn't respond well to APR's, as there are too many deer and the APR's save the deer that should be removed. Doe tags and multiple tags are a good tool for this situation.

Good quality habitat and low deer numbers is an indication of over hunting, or other mortality like disease and predation. This is a situation where APR's may help the population; if too many hunters are in the field competing with parasites and predators, the manager may remove some of the hunter success through APR's and combine that with predator removal. etc.

It gets real complicated. APR's work for some reasons and don't work for others. That is why science and biology must be considered in all deer herds.

I imagine that the places the TV folks like "The Crush" hunt are not over hunted. I imagine they now exactly, to the single deer, how many animals are living off that habitat. They strictly control hunter numbers, and certainly control deer numbers. They remove poor quality animals, don't shoot younger animals and generally have much more control over their herds than State game agencies do.

Don't forget, Game Management Agencies can't just quit selling tags to cut hunter numbers. Hunting license sales are what keep the agencies open. APR's allow them to control things like harvest, yet still sell tags.

Again, it is complicated!:):o
 
I don't understand the logic in the argument that APRs promote the removal of better quality bucks.

The standards in the APRs that I've seen are veeeerrrry low. Something like 3 points on one side.

There are not many bucks that won't have at least one antler with 3 points on it by the time they're 2 1/2.

Not shooting them when they're 1/2 and 1 1/2 years old means that there are a lot more bucks that get to be 2 1/2 or older. Having a lot more bucks that are older means that more guys will see more bucks that they can kill. More bucks that can be killed actually helps to PROTECT the would-be monster because there are more targets available.

There's no step of logic that says that not killing young deer results in there being the same number of big deer and the big ones get killed while the little ones go free.

The number of adult bucks that don't make it to that minimum standard is exceedingly low. Therefore, not shooting them before they reach that standard allows ALL the bucks to get to a reasonable age. Even if that would-be monster gets shot when he's only 2 1/2 instead of living to be 5 1/2, he still got 2 breeding seasons and he's still likely to be dominant because, remember, the argument is that the other bucks are inferior weaklings.

Now, remove the APR. Who says that would-be monster isn't going to get shot anyway? In fact, it might be MORE likely, because most hunters will be "If it's brown, it's down!" and they'll shoot any inferior spike they see OR the 1 1/2 year old 8 point and brag it up to their buddies. Right? Can it really be argued? Every less 6 month old or 1 1/2 year old around that they DON'T see is that much longer they have to wait to shoot ANYTHING and that much more likely that the deer they do see (if they see any at all) will be the would-be monster. A couple of years of not killing those little guys though and they start to see more antlered bucks More antlered bucks means that Mr 8-point is the only target in the woods. He's now LESS likely to get shot.
 
Brian..I commend u on what u can see..on what could be.... Antler Restrictions are the beginning point of management.... Thanks for not pulling punches and calling things as they are...
We should all be more concerned about the future of the deer herd than just filling the freezer..... We went a long time not shooting bucks.... Letting them walk.... We are at a point now..where most of our hunters harvest a mature buck.... Mature 8 points at 5.5 are considered management bucks.... We went years not shooting bucks or very few.... We had to harvest one doe each.... We owe it to our kids and g kids..the future of hunting....
 
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