One less Buck this year !

W

Wild Bill Bucks

New member
Seems that the Oklahoma Wildlife Department has decided that the best way to increase the Buck to Doe ratio, is to lower the bag limit this year, to two Bucks.

If you want to hunt the three seasons this year you will have to make your mind up early about which two you want to hunt. If you go out early, and take a buck with your bow, you will only be allowed to hunt one more buck in muzzleloader, and High powered rifle season.

With a 20 doe to 1 buck ratio in my area, it seems like a better idea, to raise the bag limit on does instead of leaving more inbred bucks to breed more of their sisters and mothers.

Doesn't REALLY bother me personally to much what they do, but some of the guys around these parts sure are upset about it.

Just wondered what you guys thought about this new law. Is it HURTING or HELPING ? What's your opinion.
 
Yep, and I'm all for it. Two bucks total for the year. I wouldn't even have a problem with one buck for the year (all seasons combined), to increase buck quality, and encourage people to kill more does. Then you have to decide whether or not to harvest any particular buck, or hold out for a better one. Does provide meat. Hopefully this will make the rut more competitive, and thus increase scrapes & other territorial activity, as well as make them more responsive to grunts, rattling and such. The buck to doe ratio is out of whack and this will help it back towards the right balance.

So absolutely helping; no question. Your folks out there don't understand the big picture. I had to explain this to my buddy too, who was a bit perturbed. I still don't think he gets it. Again, it oughtta be ONE buck per year, per hunter. You can still get 6 or 7 does for meat, if you want to, and this helps EVERYONE harvest bigger bucks with bigger racks. It's a no brainer if you understand how the herd and growth rates really work. Does taste just as good or better than small racked bucks, and who are you gonna impress with your little forkhorn or 7 pointer anyway?
 
I had a chance to meet Mike Hanback of Field and Stream at a hunting expo a few years back and he, along with several wildlife researchers, openly promoted the concept of killing more does to improve the quality of the herd as a whole and improve the age and size of the bucks that were harvested. They did a whole seminar on it and a good number of hunters that were skeptical at first were converts by the end of the seminar.

Hunting more does is a win/ win situation for hunters.

Better tasting meat ( does are easily better tasting than bucks) , it restores the natural balance of buck to doe ratio, the remaining bucks live longer ( read that as having BIGGER RACKS for the most part )
 
I'm an eyewitness to the success of killing more does. In the part of Missouri I hunt, you are allowed one buck, but unlimited does during the rifle season. When this was put in place (5 or 6 years ago?) most thought it would decimate the herd. However, it's been exactly the opposite. The hunting has steadily gotten better. Before, if we'd get one buck between the 3 of us, that would be a good season. 2 of the last 3 years we have filled all 3 of our buck tags. In those 3 years we've taken 7 bucks and 8 does.
 
When the subject is table fare, I'll take a 150 lb. flathead any day. Bucks get all rutted up, you have to remove the tarsal gland and the meat seems to be tougher because they have been fighting. I love fresh venison, and a fat corn robbing doe is the first thing on my mind. I put one in the freezer, and have all season long to hunt horns. Here in Clintonia, we have DMP permits for most areas in the southern zone, and very few in the northern zone. Most hunters hunt all three seasons, or at least two of them to maximize the chance of seeing Harvey Wallhanger.
 
One of our newly elected lawmakers just left my office, and he told me that the original bill that was proposed on this was worded to make a hunter harvest a Doe before he could hunt a Buck, but that bill was voted down and they put this bill up instead. They also considered a kind of "slot limit"
if you will, letting you shoot a buck with 4 points or less, or 8 points or bigger, but they thought that would be to hard to police.

I think all of your opinions are right on, and I can see where this new law can help the ratio. I have no problem taking a Doe because I am a meat hunter, but I know guys that wouldn't harvest a Doe if their life depended on it. The guys that want to hunt a Buck only, are really contributing to the problem, but it is hard to convince them of that. I have tried several times to encourage them to harvest a Doe, and give the meat to someone who needs it (there are people in every community that need the meat and can't afford it) but I haven't had much luck with that.

I am fortunate to have some guys that hunt on our lease that will harverst their limit of does every year, but the ratio is not changing much. We still have about 15 or 20 Does to every Buck we see. All of us on the lease will only shoot Bucks with at least 8 points, and then, only if it is a nice 8 point, but since you can't keep them caged up, the guys on the property around us probably get a lot of them.

It will be interesting to see the effect this new law has on numbers and size over the next few years.
 
Well said, WBB. I'd be interested too. People just don't understand. If you have 1 buck to every 15 or 20 does, or more, sometimes the bucks will simply die of sheer exhaustion trying to chase & mate every doe in rut, particularly when there is a cold snap immediately following the rut, when they go back to feeding to try to replenish their systems after rut. How are you gonna get big deer if they're die in middle age from too much sex? Sure it'd be a great way to "go" (better than getting hunted I guess. :) ). But that's not conducive to big bucks for the hunters.

I definitely like this better than the alternative of "must shoot a doe before a buck". That's no good, if the BIG one comes along. But as mentioned, after a few more years, they should change it to one buck per year per hunter, all seasons combined. OR perhaps, better yet, one buck only in gun & primitive seasons combined, and one more buck in archery - that would be the best way. Not allow two in gun/primitive combined - you only get two bucks if you are archery hunting one of them, either before or after (or during) gun & primitive seasons.
 
I live and hunt in south Texas and just happen to be in a three buck county & I wish that Texas Parks and Wildlife would change the county I hunt in to a one buck county. Drives me up the wall when I talk to our neighbors each year and they show me all the bucks they shot that year and they are a bunch of young 6, 7, 8, 9, & 10 points and they always ask why we don't have any big deer that will score high. Each year I tell them it is because ya'll are shooting to many bucks and you can't grow big bucks if you shoot them when they are 2 1/2, 3 1/2, or 4 1/2. But they don't understand they think they need to kill a certain # of deer each year so they won't have too many which is when I ask them why don't you just shoot some does to which they reply if we did that we wouldn't have any bucks because does are where the bucks come from. Last year they droped by to show me a buck they killed it was a 1 1/2 year old 5 point with some really good tine length and I asked them why they shot it and they said it was a meat buck and it only had five points I couldn't believe my ears, I said if you wanted some meat why didn't you just shoot a doe. They didn't get the point.
 
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