I think I'm misunderstood. He's not even a big antler restriction guy. He's a big proponent of determing the age of the deer on the hoof - something which is very difficult to get deer hunters to do in the field overall.
His "management practices" are to manage to whatever goals the landowners have. Our biggest project in our deer management class where we traveled to a variety of landowners who had different goals was to write a management plan to suit the goals of the landowner. Some wanted more deer for any opportunity, some wanted just bigger deer, some wanted trophy deer. Your job as a wildlife biolgoist and manager is to provide a management plan to accomplish those goals.
If the DNR doesn't have a clear cut goal maybe that's part of the problem.
Down here we have more freaking deer than we know what to do with (we have so many deer that some WMA managers now are taking Coyotes off the list of species you can take incidental to a deer hunt to keep the coyote numbers high - coyotes gotta eat too and they keep downward pressure on the deer herd especially in fawning season - how's that for an eye opener and an off the wall management method?). So management plans for producing more deer and more opportunity aren't really in that much demand. However it doesn't mean he can't still do one.
Last edited by NathanL; 10/05/11.
