I used to hunt with a guy that said "you can't stockpile deer". He seemed to be under the impression that they were born with the antlers they'd always have, and that the herd was eradicated and reappeared each season, magically I guess. Deer simply didn't age, or breed. Dumb, but he wasn't alone in that kind of thinking, and he believed in killing every legal buck he could get in his scope...he'd shoot 5 or 10 75lb nubbin bucks a season and think he was really a dandy hunter. Proud as punch of each one he killed. One guy I knew took 18 spikes in one season. Never occurred to him they might grow in to bigger deer...he complained that we didn't have any decent bucks on our land to shoot. Wonder why?!
I love to hear that kind of stuff as well. I have been hunting down there on a friends property for about 10 years and we usually did not kill does but if we did it was in the AM in the woods and not in a food plot. I had roughly 400 acres to hunt and there was just me on the property . His relatives had 500 acres next door and they belonged to the "if it is brown it is down group" in fact on three sides of him that philosophy held true. Living there year round my friend sees the same results you have been seeing as have I and I hunt there maybe 2 weeks out of the season in Late January. One year I had a very old mature buck come out of some pines at dark o thirty with a 25 yard shot if that. He was missing half of one side of his rack. I let him go and he continued onto his neighbors land where they killed him .
