Originally Posted by BigDave39355
Originally Posted by WTM45
Originally Posted by jeffbird

You'll start shooting big deer, body weight and/or rack size, when you quit shooting small deer.


In some areas, doing that simply means "tag soup" for the hunter.
Too broad a brush.
Management varies, and has to, even within a state's regions.



Too many deer will equal low body weight. Only so many groceries on a given amount of land. Camp I’m in saw that when we started shooting more does. Over several years avg doe weight went from 70# to 100# with some close to 120#.

We don’t shot the does during rut. But before and after rut. Game on.


The big time trophy hunting and contests take away from the fun of hunting IMO. It got to around here, the big buck contest gave away a 4-wheeler. I watch a FB page that posts deer killed across MS. No matter how big or little the buck is. Someone always has add “it’d been good one next year”.. WTF? Maybe this guy gets to hunt once in a blue moon and that’s his deer for the freezer for the year.

As with kids, i love for kids to kill deer. Any shape and size. Spikes are legal in MS for youth. Get the kids hooked. Let them be trophy hunters when they grow up. Kinda like fishing for kids. Take them bass fishing and it’ll last about five minutes. Take the bream fishing and them will have a ball.

It doesn't matter if it's a good year or not. In Ohio, we get one buck a year, no matter how we take it, and average 4-7 does, depending on where in the state you hunt.

Edit: here, a buck has 3" of spike or more. Anything less is an "antlerless deer or doe"

An unemployed Jester, is nobody's Fool.

the only real difference between a good tracker and a bad tracker, is observation. all the same data is present for both. The rest, is understanding what you're seeing.

~Molɔ̀ːn Labé Skýla~