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.
Concur, but "tag soup" is not a good excuse to shoot a young buck, except for those at subsistence level. For them, whole different standard is in play and I have no qualms whatsoever.
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.
Obviously the old saying is too subtle and whistled past the point. Restated - quit shooting young bucks. They cannot grow up to be a big deer, whether body or rack size, if they are killed when they are young.
Yes, totally understand about limiting the population to the carrying capacity. In most scenarios, but not all, the most effective way to reduce the population is to reduce does. I've been asked to help cull does on a large property, over 10,000 acres, a few times when they were having a hard time hitting the required numbers to meet the management goals. We'd shoot and fill the back of a pickup bed with does, take them in to be cleaned, go out do it again, and again. Sounds like fun, but it turns into challenging work in a hurry. None of the meat went to waste. It was given directly to families in the area who were quite happy to have it. Same goes for pigs most of the time.
Without question, management criteria need to fit the specific locale, but rarely does that warrant shooting young bucks by which I mean fawns, one and two year olds.
As for kids having fun, the ones that hunt with me follow the same criteria as the adults on the property. They have plenty of opportunity shooting does and every pig we see. If they shoot a buck, they know they met the same standards as the grownups.
Never heard any of them complain and they seem to have lots of fun being treated like a grownup. Have heard a few grown men whining, and I'd prefer that my nephews not grow up to be those men.
My then 11 year old nephew shot his first buck, which was a mature 10 that went 148" and 220 pounds. Right place at the right time for sure, but the foundation for success was the property owner not letting people shoot the young bucks. It was a relatively small property too, just a few hundred acres of mesquite in the middle of a some big ag fields. The deer had lots to munch on at night, and spent the days in this wooded property. So even on smaller properties, letting them grow up can pay dividends.
Spikes are worthy of a thread unto themselves, but the spikes I see all are yearlings and I give them a pass.
If I need to put meat in the freezer, it is whatever fits the management goals for the property with few exceptions, such as shooting a buck with a broken leg this year.
I have hunted on two properties where they wanted any deer seen shot to bring the numbers down, but those were very unusual circumstances.
One of the better criteria put in place on one NWR where I used to hunt was the "earn a buck" rule. Hunters had to bring in a doe before they were given a buck tag. Worked pretty well at cutting numbers.
