M1A1ABRAMS
Well-Known Member
Not in this part of PA. 5A The deer have their safe zones. And they know them well. Lol
Thoughts on antler restrictions
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M1A1ABRAMS
Well-Known Member
Are you sure about the inbreeding ? https://www.themeateater.com/hunt/whitetail-deer/do-deer-inbreed
SteveBurton
Formerly 'Jackmonkey'
No more organized deer drives in our nugget of 2E. Maybe 2-3 guys walking through the grapevines and spoil piles to push them around. Occasionally you will see a big, roaming bachelor heading home after a night of chasing hotties. Most of the time they are crossing open areas like Usain Bolt and are gone in 3 seconds. I don't mind other hunters walking around our property as it gets the deer moving. By the 3rd or 4th day of the season, they are dug in so deep you're lucky to see a half dozen does.
Artificial Circumstances
While the odds of inbreeding in the wild are slim, Vucurevich says it's possible in scenarios where the natural order is manipulated or displaced."When it's artificial circumstances, it can and will occur."
Back in the early years in MO it was definitely an "Artificial circumstance." Almost ALL bucks were being harvested at 1.5 yrs old. A two year old buck was rare. Why? There were very few deer(reintroduction efforts) there were no doe tags. The herd in all of MO was rebuilding from almost zero. If you saw a spike you shot it. That was gonna be your only chance at a buck for the year.
After reading that article I would say the expert in that article doesn't have much "boots on the ground experience" with inbreeding. Roman nose and kinked tail ends are what showed up in florida cougars. A cougar researcher I knew years ago was touting the Florida panther as a seperate subspecies due to kinked tail and Roman nose. I upset her when I told her that was inbreeding. I said if you want to see coonhounds with the same traits I can show them to you.
I also have a lot of first hand experience with a lot of inbreeding in dogs and cattle. Roman noses also show up in horses, deer, dogs etc. Along with a bottom jaw that is about 30% to short. That is what we were seeing on our farm in the deer. Short bottom jaws.
Do these traits show up in one breeding? Not usually. Second inbreeding, not usually. But when that family tree gets narrower then it starts showing up.
Do we have that problem now? No. We also have lots of 2 year old bucks and a large supply of three year olds. Four and five year olds are a lot rarer but they are out there. So we do have a lot of dispersing taking place. I haven't seen a short bottom jaw in 20 - 25 years.
Montana'eer
Well-Known Member
That is 100% spot on. Our philosophy is if you have to think about it- pass on it. With mule deer you'll know it when you see it.
Son of a Gun!
Well-Known Member
Here in Wyoming I like these restrictions on Mule Deer but don't think they'd do any good on Whitetail! My family has hunted a General Area that has had a 3 point or better restriction on Mulies for about 5 years and I feel the trophy quality has improved! Sadly the G&F doesn't agree and removed it this year! We shall see!
We drive deer every year and I'd say half or more of our deer killed are directly as a result of driving. Several of our biggest bucks were killed during drives including the 9pt I killed last year and the biggest buck taken on the property a few years ago. It's highly effective and the main reason we kill more deer than any other group that I know.
Our driving methods have changed over the years, when I first started we always yelled back and forth to keep the line. We found that over time the deer would use that to locate us and then bust back through the line. So what we started doing instead was basically still hunting our way through the property while staging people along the escape points. This has resulted in the deer getting more skittish and busting out early to the standers and less deer getting back through.
The downside is that after the drive it does take a while for the deer to settle down so we generally stand hunt the properties first and then drive different properties each day as to not hammer the herd too hard. We did also kick out the largest buck we've seen on the property though the guys missed him as he ran off the property only to be shot halfway through the last day of the season. He wasn't living on the property and simply popped in for refuge but without driving we would have never gotten a shot in the first place.
That being said we definitely don't drive like we used to, I hear the stories from my Dad about how they used to drive the property multiple times in a day pushing the deer back and forth from cover to cover slowly whittling down the numbers. If a buck got pushed in from off the property they would surround the cover and hammer it until they pushed him out or killed him. We don't hunt nearly that hard but we also have more guys to get the shooting done so it balances out.
The other thing is that I find a lot of groups are generally selfish when it comes to hunting, not just one camp against the other but even among themselves. We know some guys in a camp that it is the definition of every man for himself. They have guys so selfish that if they were heading back and saw someone struggling to load a deer on their ATV they wouldn't even stop to help let alone do any kind of walking to help push deer to each other.
The way we hunt is that everyone is in it together, all the meat is split evenly, the work is shared and most importantly the fun is shared. Guys who haven't got a deer get set as standers while the younger guys and guys who have got deer take turns as drivers. If someone gets a deer we help each other out tracking, gutting and dragging it out. Everyone pitches in while skinning and we have a whole process set up for butchering and packaging the deer so that everyone gets their share vacuum sealed and ready for the freezer.
This year I killed my buck first thing in the morning on the opening day, that night I skipped the evening hunt and spent several hours helping skin the 11 deer we had gotten that day. I then spent the rest of the season walking probably 10+ miles to push deer to others and my Dad and brother were right there with me. Then we all spent 6 hours processing the deer so that everyone could get their share. That's the way I grew up hunting, the way it's always been and as long as we are hunting our property that is the way it will always be.
most of those who quit were probably not harvesting any deer to begin with.
Mike Matteson
Well-Known Member
The nunber of tags will take care of the size of animals that are available. The state of Washington has a 4 point or better for their muley. I hunt there a few years back for birds. Noted a lot of muley in that area. No 4 points just 3 point or less. Owner stated that the laws were changed several years ago. That allow for only 4 points or better. Nothing smaller. Now all you see 3 pionts. Some very nice racks too, but 3 pointer or less.
Nevada had a great program, but the legislator got involved again, because the local wanted more tags for them. So now the deer are being cut way back. To bad! I hunted there several times. Drawing tags was hard to get one being out of state. One of the biggest problem is the state want the money to pay for there programs.
So limit tags is the way to go, and not sizes of horns. If there is a large population of animals, then allow more doe or cow tags to cut the numbers down if needed. I feel that everybody has to have a conversation tag to be in the national forest or on state lands hiking to tourting.
At the same time I read where rancher allow people come on his ranch to hunt elk. The so called hunt made a **** show if it. Wounded several elk and were allow to run off and die. The really speaks well for the so called hunters. Not any different with crap campers.
WA is actually a 3 point minimum for mule deer.
I watched a podcast a while back where they were talking about point restrictions being imposed in Utah(?) or Idaho(?) and what the results were in other places that did the same. As you state the 4 point restriction killed off the 4 point bucks so only large 3 points were left because they genetically would not grow a 4th point, even though they were plenty old to do so.
Westside WA has a 3 point minimum for elk and for the most part you have a lot of 4 and small 5 points being killed. In the 70's my aunt shot a nice 6 point locally and she could stand inside the horns. I see nothing like that anymore. It used to be any bull so more spikes were shot taking hunters out of the field so to speak.
THERE HAS NOT BEEN ONE GOOD THING COME OUT OF THIS PERIOD. THEY DESTROYED DEER HUNTING CENTRAL PA. WHAT A JOKE. THIS SHOULD BE IN THE HUMOR SECTION.
I couldnt agree more. Reagan's 9 most scariest words ring true. After 3 years of implementing antler restrictions at my lease, we have shot 3 130-140 class bucks this year. Those are big bucks where we hunt.
Give it ten years. It is more about changing and educating the minds of hunters than it is a silly 4 points on a side rule.
At least in MO it took ten years of bucks getting lucky and smart to reach the pinnacle of at least a dozen 180+ being shot in one county in one year.
They do work great for Whitetails. But like I said it is more about education than a law.
