Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting What bald-headed characteristic is your weakness?

And neither is wasting three out of four of every buck born in the hope it will grow horns big enough to stoke an ego when we all understand that out of the deer that live that long maybe at best half of them might be worth hanging on the wall anyway.

Pee down your leg about it all you want, but that's life in Bambi's world. An you get to allow those bucks who never will grow a big rack breeding opportunities and thus further diminishing the characteristics in the herd that you are trying to select for by not shooting those wasted deer.

For my money, we had more big racks taken yearly back fifty and more years ago when virtually every hunter in the state was a brown and down hunter.

It depends on what the goals are. It seems like a fairly sound management for numbers strategy, but a poor management for antlers strategy. The Minnesota DNR pretty much manages for numbers, except for a couple of areas in zone 3 that have points restrictions. Buck tags are OTC statewide.

Around the metro area, land parcels are small. You would need participation from a dozen or more landowners in order to do effective QDM (antler management), and it would only take one to screw it up. In the northeast, you've got wolves, the ultimate if it's brown, it's down hunters, so management for numbers makes sense to me there as well, at least until we start managing the wolves better. In the area that I hunt on the North and South Dakota borders, there are some outstanding antlers out there, and I'm only aware of one camp that deliberately practices QDM, but you only get one buck tag in MN, so once nice heads start showing up, people start passing on the yearlings.

No one is disputing the need for reasonable herd control in certain over populated areas. Responsible hunters get it!

AND, I don't need a lecture from you about how deer hunting was 50 or even 60 years ago.

Now go pee down your own leg!

I'll type this slowing in hopes you'll keep up:

You have adult sex ratios that are askew.

If fawns are born in equal sex ratios, the only way to achieve and maintain a balanced adult sex ratio is through female harvest.

Bucks have higher natural mortality rates due to hunter preference, fighting, post-rut stress, bigger home ranges, etc.

This is why you're allowed only one buck and limitless does.

But in your infinite wisdom, you're targeting the one animal that stands the chance (along with liberal doe harvest) to one day balance that.

Shooting a button buck every now and then isn't the end of the world. But to make them the #1 target is logic only a liberal could likely understand.

Good day all. Any doe without fawns is fair game in my book. I prefer bigger older deer, but that is simply because it gets me a better meat per gut pile ratio.

I like it!

I'm for shooting deer to fill a freezer. I love to shoot does. In the area of MN I hunt you get one deer and it has to be an antlered buck with at least one antler 3" long.

I believe If you want to shoot a buck fawn, intentionally or not, you should have to burn your buck tag on it.

Shooting them on purpose does virtually nothing for herd management. If your area has small racks and big deer...you have too many deer. Period. It's not rocket surgery and has been proved over and over many times. You're probaby only seeing the 2.5 year old deer, and shooting them. Hinkley has some GIANT racked bucks.

MN bucks can get heavy quickly a 2.5 year old buck with a dressed weight of 200 pounds is not a shock to anyone that hints ne MN.

In some states they require muzzle loading to be done with iron sights.
I have seen many a button buck be mistaken for a doe with low powered scopes and iron sights.
To penalize someone who has shot a button buck thinking he was a doe for meat is wrong.

Where I hunt, during the season does tend to group together. You'll see a group of 5-9 antler less deer moving together. I try not to shoot the largest doe, as she will likely train the smaller ones and I will not shoot a fawn. I try to shoot the middle sized does, since they aren't the matriarch, but aren't fawns. I make sure not to shoot all of the middle, as one of them will replace the matriarch. I hunt a 3 point per side area, and hunt in a club with traditional values, so button buck shooting is very frowned upon. I'd rather not shoot a deer and retain the respect of the club members. I passed on a very good sized lone antler less deer last December, since I couldn't be sure if it was a button or not.

Great idea!

Buy binoculars.

Now I'm not saying I haven't shot one by accident. I have. The first deer I shot was a nubbie and it wouldn't have mattered if it was a 13pt with a drop tine. I was a deer hunter at that point.

There are also plenty of people that just don't care what they shoot. They just want some meat. That's fine with me too. You think they care if they have to burn their tag on a nubbie. Nope. And I have no issue with it.

But to target them over all other deer is weird and against actual deer management.

Uphill from the truck......and close

I like when they stand still and present a nice broadside target for the 22-250 and 60 grain Partition combo. Even better if they do so in a place that I can drive the truck to and make loading easier.

I'll type this real, real slow for the two boys who ride the short bus.

EVEN IF YOU DO NOT SHOOT ANY IMMATURE BUCKS AND EVEN IF YOUR NEIGHBORS DON'T SHOOT ANY 3 OUT OF 4 BORN WILL NEVER REACH MATURITY.

If you live in an area like east central Minnesota like I do even those reaching maturity have no guarantee of having a decent rack. Yeah, we get a few down around Forest Lake/Wyoming but until you start getting up to Rush City they are really sparse even though further south they see less hunting pressure. Around Hinckley, 8s and 10s that will ever score past 150 are sparse but still better than further south.

As far as peeing down your leg there Whelen nut, back when I was a kid hunting N/W of Park Rapids in an area when deer season "opened" late August and no one practiced QDM, but just shot what they needed, when they needed one we saw a couple big racks in the crew every year. That with no one passing any deer during deer season. That area is a simple matter of genetics. If you want that kind of genetics you gotta be working really hard to find and kill the four YO plus deer with sub-standard racks. Something way harder than shooting the big ones you have to pass on to improve the gene pool.

Even at Hinckley there aren't but a couple of parcels big enough that an individual parcel practicing QDM has a prayer of improving antler genetics

So, using YOUR numbers and YOUR logic, if 3 out of 4 little bucks are never going to make it anyway, hunters should intentionally shoot every little buck they see to increase the chances that more of them reach maturity? That should work out really well!

That's not what I said, nor what I implied.

You can whine all you want, but here's where it comes down to.

Three out of four bucks born will never live long enough to become mature bucks. WHETHER YOU HUNT THEM OR NOT.

Of those that do live long enough, perhaps half of them won't produce trophy racks.

Now, tell me this... Will producing more deer by not shooting does produce more or fewer bucks. Will more deer result in more bucks living long enough to be a potential trophy?

Hint... more is better. Except, when it comes to whining.

Killing buck fawns in some circumstances may result in additive mortality rather than compensatory mortality and you may wind up with a small number less. But, it just isn't going to be easy to say how many except in pretty extreme circumstances.

THAT is precisely why zone one is killing bucks only this year and there is no stricture on whether it's a spike or a big one.

Keep digging you should get out of that hole eventually.

OK.

Why don't you explain to all of us just why the DNR is using precisely that approach to rebuild the herd in the 100 zone??? n Not restriction one on points just shoot bucks. LITTLE BUCKS COUNT JUST THE SAME AS BIG ONES.

This oughta be good.

How did we get on antler restrictions? I thought this was about shooting button bucks because they taste better and they are just going to die anyway?

Keep digging!

We got here because some ass on the forum seems to think killing bucks, small bucks in particular is an unholy corruption and I ought to burn in hell for even considering it. Certainly, then shooting a button buck is less harmful because it has at best a 50% survival chance. Whereas, as they get older, up to a point, their chances of survival another year increases. Thus the DNR's plan for rebuilding the herd in the 100 zone is on the same path to perdition is it not? Unless of course it works, just like it has in the past more than a few times. More deer = more bucks.

You just keep riding the 50% fawn survivability train. I'd love be to one of your neighbors.

If nothing else, you're entertaining.