antler point restrictions

I worry more about the slob giving ammo to the anti hunters than losing hunters. As experiences in the field improve, more decent folks will take to those fields in pursuit of that improved experience. But we digress....

APR's do as much, or more, for improving one's hunting experience than they actually do for the deer.

Available winter forage and good habitat health (carrying capacity) do more for deer quality than APR's.

We shoot surplus deer; those deer over carrying capacity. To manage for healthy deer herds, we remove the surplus animals, that don't die from other causes, with the gun.

As hunters, we want to remove "large animals" or "meat animals". The habitat does not care which surplus animals are removed, or how they are removed, so long as they are removed to carrying capacity so the habitat can remain vigorous.

Managers try and reach a balance between natural deaths, meat deer and trophy deer so the carrying capacity of the habitat remains healthy. Managers also like to sell permits and tags because they fund the management.

APR's are only a single tool in the managers habitat maintenance tool box.
 
Brian,
What you don't get is that herd reduction IS a major part of AR in Pennsylvania. If certain individuals can still shoot anything, and the doe season is now what you call a "Free for all", the deer herd gets screwed up in a hurry. Just a few years back I was able to hunt almost the full two weeks in Pa. After the first two days I walk around to hunt. Where are all the small bucks at? Where are all the rubs? The first couple years they opened the dam on doe tags I saw more bear than deer during bow season.
I used to live in a "Special Regs" area. I can tell you that the buck to doe ratio there is way screwed up. The buck outnumber the doe in a lot of those areas. I have always hunted the mountainous areas and there were always big deer in this area. Deer go a lot farther than most people think to feed on crops. There still are big deer here, but now very few. I could not even guess the ratio around here now. The Game Commission likes to try to BS everyone but the pictures do not lie. Get a hold of some old GAME NEWS (Printed by the PGC) and check out some of the pictures in them. The reasons AR appear to work in this state is: A. It is absolutely causing a drop in hunter numbers B. There is way more posted land now, which was a direct result of killing off the herd. C. The "Hunters" are now power feeding the deer on their posted land. As I said before, I don't really care, we do O.K. Do you think little Johnnie is going to keep hunting when Granpa sells the farm? I have seen a lot of kids quit as soon as they lost their special regs license at age 17. Hunting here will eventually end up as in Europe.
 
Herd reduction might go with an APR but it's not the synonymous. How a particular APR is instituted and whether or not there is or should be herd reduction goals used is not the same thing as if the APR itself is a good or bad thing.

Imagine if I had a drag car and I decided to put a supercharger on it and change the brakes from disc to drums.

When I ask you about whether or not the supercharger is a good idea, are you going to go off on me about the brakes just because I put them on at the same time?

The brakes have nothing to do with the supercharger. They might be an especially bad idea in conjuction with the supercharger but it's not SUPERCHARGERS SUCK! It's, "You shouldn't implement the supercharger if you're downgrading the brakes because..."

Improper herd management is not synonymous with APRs. If I ask about APRs, the answer should not be how much you hate herd reductions. An answer like, "You shouldn't implement APRs in conjunction with herd reductions because the herd is already too small..." might be reasonable.

I don't see any of that reasoning in this thread. All I see is "APRs SUCK!"
 
Gunplummer said:
Do you think little Johnnie is going to keep hunting when Granpa sells the farm? I have seen a lot of kids quit as soon as they lost their special regs license at age 17. Hunting here will eventually end up as in Europe.
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This may be true, but it has absolutely nothing to do with APR's.

Little Johnnie may lose his place to hunt, but I promise you it will be because of economics, not deer antler size restrictions!

When grandpa sells the farm, and little johnnie can't pay the trespass fee to the new owner, he may quit hunting. It won't be because he doesn't like APR's!
 
Not counting Maryland's first day early deer muzzleloader season...which is a travesty in it's own right {before the rut} --- First day of Maryland's firearm season {Nov. 26} on public hunting land --- will harvest 90% of the bucks in the area.

APR's will change the buck harvest on the first day of firearms season --- dramatically --- which is all well an good in my book.
 
Originally posted by BuckRub:

But as a whole I'm sure if our forefathers seen what hunting has turned into they'd be very disappointed.
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I'm thinkin' they'd be mighty impressed, especially when it comes to deer hunting. Don't think anyone can name a major deer hunting state in the lower 48 where there are not more whitetails now, than there was a century ago or earlier. Same goes for amount of deer killed. About 4 times the amount of deer killed now in my state as when my Grandfather hunted. This is due to regulations and responsible hunters, even tho there is less native habitat. Yes, deer have adapted to feed on agricultural crops as opposed to browsing solely on native plants, but the interest in the sport of hunting them has been the biggest boon to their numbers.

Originally posted by Wyoredman:


When grandpa sells the farm, and little johnnie can't pay the trespass fee to the new owner, he may quit hunting. It won't be because he doesn't like APR's!
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Exactly. The biggest reason folks stop hunting is because of lack of access to prime hunting areas. When little Johnnies grandpa sells the farm his options are to quit hunting, buy his own property, lease a hunting spot or hunt public land. Many folks quit at this point because of the negative attitude towards public land......i.e. heavy pressure, fewer deer and smaller bucks. This is what many game managers are trying to change. To give the average Joe that hunts public accessible land, the opportunity to see healthy deer and to see bucks. I'd bet for every hunter that quits hunting because they have to hunt public land with ARs, there's one that comes back to the fold or doesn't quit because of them.


Originally posted by Gunplummer:

Brian,
What you don't get is that herd reduction IS a major part of AR in Pennsylvania. There is way more posted land now, which was a direct result of killing off the herd.
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No, herd reduction is a major part of herd management. ARs are a much smaller part. One does not have to be in place for the other to work, but they can compliment each other. Many states back in the late eighties and early nineties had extremely high deer populations. These are the years many younger hunters remember. While it was nice while it lasted, it couldn't. The habitat couldn't keep up, deer/car collisions were astronomical and crop damage was out of control. While hunters loved the high numbers, non-hunters and habitat suffered. Most states brought the numbers down to realistic and healthy numbers with high numbers of antlerless tags. Again, a heyday for deer hunters that liked to shoot. That too could not last. Now, with the numbers down and antlerless deer/tags less available, there are some that don't understand why. Damn farmers and insurance people ruin it for everyone:rolleyes:Apparently it don't matter that the excessive amount of deer were ruining it for them. Posting of land has nuttin' to do with ARs or how many deer are shot. Land owners have always had control over the numbers of hunters, numbers of deer taken and type of deer taken on their property....ALWAYS. Lack of respect by slob hunters and the change of family farm land into "recreational" land owned by individuals for the sole purpose of hunting is the big reason. Deer have become a precious commodity, not just to the state, but to those that own the land they thrive on. A farmer don't let you pick his corn or milk his cow without you asking, why should he let you shoot the deer he feeds all year without permission?

Biggest drawback I see to ARs is the also the biggest whine here in this thread. That a hunter must take a little time and effort to identify their target before shooting. Instead of being able to throw lead at anything brown in the woods that moves, because all bucks are legal and they have a pocketfull of doe tags, they now must actually use some discretion. I'm thinkin' the woods will be safer and a more enjoyable place, without them.
 
Biggest drawback I see to ARs is the also the biggest whine here in this thread. That a hunter must take a little time and effort to identify their target before shooting. Instead of being able to throw lead at anything brown in the woods that moves, because all bucks are legal and they have a pocketfull of doe tags, they now must actually use some discretion. I'm thinkin' the woods will be safer and a more enjoyable place, without them.
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And that is where the wheels fall off your collective wagon. You automatically assume that those of us wishing to simply kill a deer are all dangerous slob hunters and that the sport is better off without us.

In reality, you are trying to assign your priorities to the rest of us. FWIW I have been on many hunts with both meat and horn hunters and some of the dumbest stunts and worst shooting I've ever seen were perpetrated by the latter, fueled by an obsession with killing a trophy. Are all the horn hunters I ever knew like that and are they a detriment to hunting in general? Hell no. I would never paint them all with that broad a brush, over a few duds.
 
Originally posted by Sarge:

In reality, you are trying to assign your priorities to the rest of us.
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Go back and read that line again...slowly. No where did I make any mention at all of meat hunters being duds or slob hunters. I directed my comments towards those folks, claiming to be meat hunters, that are whining because they now have to identify their target before blasting away. Folks that think passin' on a deer that might not be legal ruins their hunt as opposed to everything that is brown is legal. Is this any different than a bear hunter having to judge an animal to make sure it's not a illegal cub instead of just shooting at black? Hard for me to believe, that anyone that calls themselves a deer hunter is whining about an attempt at improving the quality of the hunt. Meat hunters? Get real....not in the lower 48. Anybody here that has a computer and can afford an internet connection does not have to hunt in order to feed themselves. They hunt for the sport of deer hunting with the meat being an added bonus. Just loving the taste of venison or preferring it to other meat don't make one a subsistence hunter. Not when one can readily go to a store and buy protein easier and cheaper. In this situation, passing on a illegal buck only deters one from the thrill of killing something. If that's what folks are in the woods for, just for the thrill of killing something, then again, the woods is better off without them.
 
In the Hunter Safety classes I help with, we teach our students the "5 stages of a "Hunter".

This thread has done a good job of showin' which stage some folks are in. Not all folks get to all five stages......many stall out at number one or two.

Where are you? The five stages of a hunter
 
Brian, I would not have a problem with APR's if they would add some provisions for taking mature bucks with bad genetics out of the herd. In Georgia, we get one restricted and one unrestricted tag per season. I'm fine with that. It lets me take a junk buck out of the herd. It lets my son take a junk deer, my wife take a junk deer, and a neighbor or two if need arises. I do not shoot young bucks. I do want to be able to take mature bucks with bad genetics out of my herd. It has been a few years since I filled the restricted tag. I have let several pretty nice 8's walk. I let a 10 and an 11 walk. Last year I did take out a huge 5 point who was old as dirt.
 
Brian,

In Pennsylvania herd reduction IS synonymous with AR's. It was the mismanaged herd reduction that started first. The Game Commission screwed it up so bad that hunters went nuts. That is when the CYA with the AR stuff started being pushed by the Pennsylvania Game Commission. The biggest hunter organization in Pa. had a lawsuit going against the PGC claiming mismanagement. I think the problem on this thread is that we don't know how each other's states are implementing their AR programs. I believe you(Brian) are right. Most hunters in Pa. would not have a problem with AR regs if they were implemented properly, but here they are just used to cover up herd decimation. Hunters are not going to swallow the BS when they see nothing where they have hunted for years and really know the area. Buck46, I am in the sometimes I am outsmarted by the deer and had a really good time stage. I have let doe walk when meat hunting because I was looking for something heavier. Anybody that thinks they have all the time in the world to just sit and have a deer walk up to them is in the daydream stage. Buck46, if I were you I would lose the cocky, know it all attitude. Accidents can happen to the safest person. We had a safety instructor with an attitude just like yours around here and he lost a son to a gun related incident. Accidents involving guns are nothing to joke about and unfortunately seem to happen to people that think they are safer than anyone else.
 
I just noticed your post, ZeroJunk. Loss of hunters due to deer management in Pa. is not a far stretch. I can name a dozen people I used to work with that quit just for that reason. The PGC keeps adding a carrot now and then to entice people to buy a license. More liberal doe tags, longer doe season, an early muzzleloader season (The Cabelea's here could not keep an inline loader on the shelf when that was implemented), bear archery season, use of crossbows in archery season. extra turkey tags, ect. It is a quick fix, but sooner or later it will catch up with them.
 
Michigan does suck. If any of you havent googled the new regs, the buck needs to have 4 tines on one side.

Now for a meat hunting perspective its bad, old bucks taste bad and are to stringy. Sure they make good jerky, but you cant live on jerky alone. Now a nice 1.5-2 year old buck is awful tender specially if gotten before the rut starts.

The apr system is a joke. You single out the big horns and let the little crap run free and wild. Its kinda like this..

your a cow rancher. do you let the 1 year old bull breed the prize heifer or do you let 'el grande' the proven 2200 pound stud muffin do all the dating work?

At the same time, many of the areas now under APR are having doe permits reduced. Sure does are over hunted but leave us a few options.

Now i live in a newly made APR unit. Ive seen perhaps 2 deer in the last five years that would qualify for the new rules as LEGAL. Everyting else doesnt get past fork horn. Even nice 4 year old bucks are scrubby little things. Horns are like twigs now. Practically get blown off when you shoot the deer.
 
There is no winning on this thread, just frustrated people trying to make a point about the effects of APR's and starting to get nasty about it. As far as I can see, the whole problem comes down to gov't interference...period. Whenever they get into managing anything, it gets screwed up and people end up on the stinky end of the stick.
You will read a lot of statistics about how the gov't folks estimate deer herds, sex ratios within herds, and all that bs, but in the end it's just some guy sitting at a desk guessing. A lot of the gov't employees trying to justify their jobs and using info provided by other gov't people trying to justify their jobs.
Statistics can be warped whichever direction some 'misdirected" gov't agency wants them to be. I for one believe little...if anything... that comes from our government anymore, and if they are telling me that we don't have a proper ratio of bucks to does in our little corner of the world, I just take that to mean another baseless guess from someone at a desk in another part of our state.
I fill out state forms for properties that are eligible for doe permits and the criteria and final determination has nothing to do with the amount of does on the property. I have one parcel that is virtually over run with does, but is only 400 acres and under their criteria only two per year can be removed. Nobody can count the amount of does due to the dense cover and nobody from the gov't will even try anyway..so where does the "expertise of all these gov't people do anything to manage herds"?
 
GunPlummer said:
I think the problem on this thread is that we don't know how each other's states are implementing their AR programs.
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There certainly is some of that. There's also a lot of misunderstanding of the causes of a lot of the various herd problems.

As I said, I would oppose a 4-pt per side restriction. I don't believe that is necessary at all.

Management of the doe herd is another issue. The problem in NY is that the deer management zones are too large. There's a zone near me (7R) that begins about 5 miles up the road and ends about 35 miles away in Ithaca. The side near Ithaca is practically infested with deer. They've turned that area (around the southern end of Cayuga Lake) into a near literal free-for-all. The end near me, though, I've been driving that road at least once a week for at least 6 years and don't recall ever seeing a single deer. A lot of the guys who hunt/own there are my customers. They complain constantly about never seeing any deer. BUT, for the DEC antlerless permit system, it's all one area. Every applicant is guaranteed 2 antlerless permits.

Now comes the real problem, which is the problem that leads to APRs and herd issues...

These guys, who complain about never seeing deer, get their 2 doe permits every single year (and since there is no APR is that zone) blast everything that's brown and has 4-legs. The DEC is handing out too many tags (though most of those hunters will shoot anything they want tag or no) but they don't force anybody to pull the trigger.

reynolds357 said:
Brian, I would not have a problem with APR's if they would add some provisions for taking mature bucks with bad genetics out of the herd.
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The problem with that notion is that it requires hunters to be knowledgeable in a way that would obviate the need for APRs. The reason you need APR if you want to increase the average buck size is that most hunters have no idea if a 6-pt is a 6-pt because he's a yearling that going to be a MONSTER or he's a 8 1/2 year old used-to-be monster or he's 3 1/2 and should be removed from the herd.

Hunter education would solve ALL these issues. The hunters would be smart enough to not decimate their herd even if they had the tags and they'd manage the buck population without the state needing APRs.

We all know that none of that is or ever has happened on a large scale and probably never will.
 
reynolds357 said:
Brian, I would not have a problem with APR's if they would add some provisions for taking mature bucks with bad genetics out of the herd.
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The problem with that notion is that it requires hunters to be knowledgeable in a way that would obviate the need for APRs. The reason you need APR if you want to increase the average buck size is that most hunters have no idea if a 6-pt is a 6-pt because he's a yearling that going to be a MONSTER or he's a 8 1/2 year old used-to-be monster or he's 3 1/2 and should be removed from the herd.

Hunter education would solve ALL these issues. The hunters would be smart enough to not decimate their herd even if they had the tags and they'd manage the buck population without the state needing APRs.

We all know that none of that is or ever has happened on a large scale and probably never will.
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This is what I am getting at... My efforts never focused on aging deer etc... I was taught to go for a cowhorn spike or a young spike as they were lighter and easier to carry and since we were not trophy hunters we let the nicer racks walk usually if we had plenty to eat already...

Does during the short doe season... sure but if if I am going to killl enuff for my family and enuff to supply a few more, I need some dead bucks...

prefer a .30-30 lever gun to a .270 and lever guns are just all sorts of wrong with a big honkin' set of optics...

I do not carry binocs and think the nice chest rig for them is neat but I shoot guns that cost less than the binocular halter...

On private leases where it is easy to have trained hunters exclusively, they would look at a cowhorn yearling knowing he will never be a bruiser and cull him... If they see a 10 point 2 year old he would never be shot until much older as he will be a bruiser... Some of my "basket 6's" turned out to be 2 year olds while some turned out to be 4 and 5 year olds who surely were breeding along the way... So to expect everyone to learn to proficiently and quickly age a deer and have a set of kill/no kill parameters for the various quality deer at the various ages is a stretch in the public lands game...

Me, I like florida's law... one spike 4 inch or longer is a buck... IIRC

Brent
 
I think one of the major threats for viable APR program's, such as in the state of Pennsylvania...is illegal poaching of the whitetail deer herd. Pennsylvania game wardens are seemly at a loss to rectify the poaching problem ---because if they do try to catch and arrest these deer poacher's --- the game warden's will sometimes be threatened with physical and bodily harm, including the threat of having the warden's resident house being burnt to the ground by the activities of these nefarious poachers.
 
Erno, I have worked as a police officer for 17 years. 14 of that has been as a narcotics investigator. If you are not willing to assume the risks that come with the job, retire.
 
There is no winning on this thread...
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...nor at a PA Game Commission hearing. Farmers complain about record damage and need to control the herd. Woods hunters complain it is a waste of time to walk in the woods. There are different worlds out there.

My .02 is current one size fits all antler restrictions just aren't working in our woods. Letting a spiker browse on saplings for another year seldom produces a shooter the way those who hunt corn fields(or corn feeders) assume.

I've tried to reckon my opinions with their facts last few days, but find after 10 years of APR there is little fact and lots of soft language to sift through. They discuss higher survival for young bucks, and higher average "age" of the smaller harvest, minus hard specifics on the number of 6-8-10-etc points taken by year. ... they note yearling spikers can catch up to yearling 6 pointers at the 4.5 year point, but is that too long in the gene pool? .....their response to concern about small bucks breeding is soft language to the effect they seem to do the job, and diminish the role of those bucks by saying half the genetics come from mom... ... hunter success rate in buck season is down to 13% from 16% before 2002 APR, but they use success stats from the 80s to call it a draw..

Bottom line is APR changes were hard fought. Folks have reputations heavily invested in this experiment. The decline in hunters, deer herd, harvest rates, etc may be much worse than the previous decade, but not bad enough for them not to declare success.
 
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