I like meat. Lucky me we have doe tags and can shoot culls.
I try to do whats best for the herd regardless. Which means rarely harvesting a mature deer, but taking the bad and the excess all the time. They eat fine. If not better than a wallhanger.
Others don't care at all. Thats ok with me. I just don't want you next to me shooting ever buck that walks by, bringin in the friends and in laws etc... on a 20 acre parcel of land... Other than that if you ( in my particular home area) kill one buck a year, and I do, I hope yours isnt' a promising one but even if it is, I can handle that just fine.
It gets really tough I know, where folks have no chance to shoot a doe or spike or cull. But those that have the chance and say they want a bigger one, but not a mature one are just pot calling kettle black really.
Had a guy last year here send out letters to all us neighbors about management etc... and he was seeing this 11. I agreed. The deer really needed 2-3 years more to be prime and hopefully have bred more does. All he did was get the folks around to not shoot it last year so he could shoot it first thing this year cause it was a bit bigger. I'd seen it all summer long and even into season a bit before he shot it. His choice though. But he was pot calling kettle black. He was selfish in the whole scheme of things. Luckily he doesn';t have a clue whats really out there to make that 11 look fairly small because he doesn't run cameras and hunts out of his dining room window behind the house, the mature deer generally don't do that unless a doe is in heat....
