While I understand where you are coming from, I am completely for antler restrictions. I was made to follow all the rules when I was introduced to hunting. Same as an adult would. This is conservation which is part of hunting. If the kid couldnt grasp that or have the patience to follow the rules, he shouldnt necessairly be huting.
I'm sure kids grasp rules just fine. Not sure if you have kids or not, but teaching them patience when they're 10-15 years old is like talking to a wall. I'm sure most kids wouldn't be keen on sitting there potentially waiting for years to get a buck that meets the antler requirements. In a sport that is pretty much dying, like hunting is, getting the youth involved should be one of the top priorities. I'm sure you as a kid, didn't give much of a hoot about the conservation aspect of hunting, you just liked hunting.
I think MN is the perfect example of how well antler point restrictions can work. In the SE corner of the state there is a 4 point rule for one side plus there is no party hunting and you can only shoot one buck. The rest of the state has no antler point restrictions and you can party hunt and shoot as many bucks as you can get tags from people. There is a lot of big bucks getting shot in SE MN every year, there are still big bucks being shot in the rest of the state but way less per hunter because of the brown its down and if I don't shoot it my neighbor will mentality. Antler point restrictions alone will not be the greatest help though, I think the biggest factor is people wanting to hunt bigger mature bucks know they need to not only worry about how many points the buck has but also to try and pass younger bucks. Food, water, protein, minerals, pressure, sanctuaries all play a role but none are as important as age structure for big bucks.
For the kids that is a tough situation and I get any parent wanting to let their kids shoot whatever they want too. Most of us when we were younger shot every buck that gave us an opportunity, but management wasn't as big of a factor for deer hunting. My son is way more into management than my daughter, he goes and helps with checking cameras, scouting and hanging stands and see's what we are trying to do. He wants to shoot a doe if he can not shoot a mature buck. My daughter does not want to shoot a small buck but isn't willing to pass 3 year old bucks like my son.
I can't remember a time when there weren't doe tag allocations unless you go WAY back to the early 80's. They just used to be by county not unit. I do remember in the 80's in archery you could use your deer tag for a doe but then you were done hunting because you didn't have a tag for a buck.
For non-residents? Sure, it happens all the time. Doe tags aren't available for non-residents at the same time they become available for residents. Not sure if it's still that way now but non-residents had a different doe tag availability date than residents and we always missed out. Has that changed? It happened multiple years in a row for our WMU when the they first got rid of the separate hunting seasons. I don't keep track anymore because I've stopped hunting PA. And to answer the previous comment about kids, I do have kids. They aren't old enough to hunt yet but there's no way a young kid would be able to make the hike to a spot where they would even be able to see a mature buck. Getting used to the rules doesn't mean anything for a kid if they can't make the hike up and down the mountains to get to a prime buck location. I really think people aren't understanding the kind of hunting I'm talking about. There's no fields, there's no food plots, it's mountains and pines. Public game lands in the mountains. We just don't see mature bucks close to the cabin so we have to go deeper. That's no problem for an adult, but for a young kid it's not only hard to do in the dark and pack in a ground blind, it's dangerous on the steep hillsides.
