So Im hearing that some congress men in new york are thinking of putting in a law that says. To shoot a buck it will have to have 3 points on one side min. Due to over the years past 75 % of bucks shot are 1.5 years old or less. Some ares have already done it and it has improved the quality of deer shoot took 2 to 3 years for the numder of deer shoot to climb back up. I like this idea.
Lol, you must not be familiar with Pennsylvania's antler restrictions. It changes from one wildlife management unit to another, it's a complete circus and has yielded absolutely no improvement to the size of bucks in our area.
It is more likely a law to encourage shooting does for meat instead of spikes and other young deer. The attitude that bucks are shooter deer and does aren't is still a prevalent paradigm in many areas. I can't tell you the times I have shot a doe... with my bow and had someone say something to the effect of " why would you shoot a doe?" Or "isn't that illegal?"
^^^This absolutley!!! Def need to take more does here, and yes maybe antler restriction will help in years to come if it goes statewide, but something def needs to be done in terms of deer management here.
That's the problem, they button up doe hunting as if it's wrong and then put restrictions on antlers to try and improve the herd. It's nonesense. It's one thing to eliminate spike hunting but to say you can't shoot 4 pointers is just wrong in my opinion. That's a perfect first buck for a youth to shoot. As we have witnessed on our property in PA, the antler restriction has done nothing to produce bigger bucks because the flaw is that the bucks in our area are mountain deer, they survive on woody forage and grass more than anything else. There's no flat terrain to even have a food plot, so seeing a 6-8 pointer is just as rare today as it was before the antler restrictions. The best we can do is put out corn and minerals even though it's simply not enough at such a small level to make that much of an impact and then hope a deer comes through at a slow enough pace to let us scope it to ensure it's even legal. By then the shot is either spoiled or the third point ends up being too short. It takes the enjoyment out of hunting because in the end, most people I know are meat hunters and size/big rack doesn't matter.
An antler restriction is less about bucks, and more about bring balance to the deer heard. If you can't shoot a spike or a forkie, then you will shoot the doe instead. Raising the number of does killed and giving the bucks another year to develop. People need to be conditioned, and the mentality of shooting a young buck because you know your neighbor is going to shoot him needs to conditioned out of them. If you know your neighbor isn't going to shoot him, then you're going to be more inclined to pass him up, hoping for something older and more mature. I have been living in an area under a 4pt on one side antler restrictions for close to 8 years or so. I've owned my property for 6 years and can tell you that the quality has increased 10 fold. Mature bucks are hard to kill and rarely show themselves in daylight hours, so if you're not running trail cameras, you might not even know the exist. I have 40 acres and the last couple years I've had 20 plus mature bucks show up on camera each year. This year I saw 1 mature buck while hunting all season long while hunting. They are there, they are just smarter than those young bucks. We have a pretty good balance now, infact I would guess I had more bucks than does on my trail cameras this season, with bucks that range anywhere from yearlings to a buck that is probably 7-8 years old. As for youth, during their two seasons, they lift the restrictions.
^^^ NY deer hunting sucks in general, except for some isolated pockets though out the state. Anything that promotes a more balanced deer herd will be a net positive given enough time. I have hunted in the pilot area and we already have seen and increase in the amount of older bucks killed. Will we every be compered quality wise to the Midwest...Not likely as we do not have the the quality of habitat except for a small part of western NY....that said we can still work to improve what we do have. The brown and down mentality has prevailed to long and NY is starting to see its costing them money.
Balancing the deer herd can be done by limiting when does can be taken. Doing it by antler restriction and making the assumption that hunters will take a doe because they can't shoot a legal buck is silly. If you have a regular season that allows the harvest of a buck or doe just make it buck only and then have a separate shorter doe season. This works MUCH better than having an antler restriction. PA hunting in the 80s and 90s was great because they had separate seasons, now everyone is worried about shooting a monster buck and in many WMUs the hunting sucks.
I'm not sure I follow what you are saying, but the point of the antler restriction is to up the number of doe killed. If you are a meat hunter and you can't shoot a 3pt buck that walks in front of you on opening day, then you are more likely to hunt longer and take the first legal deer that walks by. Most likely that will be a doe. Why would you want to shoot a 100lb forkie when you could shoot a 140lb mature doe? The only way to achieve a balanced heard, is to shift the kill from dumb yearling spikes and forkies, to does and more mature bucks. If 90% of all the dumb forkies are killed today, how many will be there next year? Simple math says 10 percent of what would have been there the next season if you didn't kill them. So say you can't shoot them this year. next season you will have 90% more 2 1/2 year olds running around. There are a decent percentage of those bucks that won't make the antler restriction, so these deer will live to be 3 1/3. This is when a deer can truly start to reach their full potential, and the get a lot smarter by this age. A decent percentage of these bucks will survive because they are smarter than us. Now you have a lot of 4 1/2 year olds running around. Every year these buck get smarter and smarter with only a small percentage of them getting killed. After about 5 to 6 season, you should have a much better age structure. There will be a much stronger rut because you have many more mature bucks, and fewer does to go around. That's when the hunting gets good. If a buck has to fight and search to bread the doe, there's a much higher probability he will be seeking during the daylight hours. Is an antler restriction the only solution? No, but it has proven to be effective and achieving it's goals of a better age structure among bucks, and lower doe numbers.
This is an argument not even worth trying to debate. I am all for antler restrictions, and I will leave it at that. I have heard some absolute doozies from people on this subject, but my all time favorite goes something like this ......"Well if the antler restrictions do work, then it will be harder to kill a deer because mature bucks are hard to kill"
SkyWalker.... I wish there was a way I could give you a high five through the computer screen, very well said sir!!
What are the usual limits that someone can take in NY? In my area in MN I can take one doe/buck with my primary tag and have the option to buy 4 additional bonus tags for does. No antler restriction.
Limits are as follows ....in all their stupidity Bow Season 1 deer either sex Regular season 1 buck MZ season either sex or if you bought a bow tag then ..antlers less only. BUT you can also use your Either sex bow tag in the MZ season. Doe tags are by lottery for differ areas and can be used in any season. Most dmu have one doe limit....except for general tags. Our firearms season is 28 days in the middle of the rut and followed by a 7 day muzzleloader season...anyone seeing the stupidity yet? So the brown is down crowd can kill about anything on four legs...and we need to wonder why 75% of the yearly buck harvest is comprised of yearling? Antler restrictions are only one part of the the solution. Changes: 1 buck limit, tag can be used in any season. AR 3pts on a side east of I 81 AR 4pts on a side west of I81 Either sex tags can only be used in DMU that allow antler less harvest. Doe permits by lottery only. Shorter firearms season...after the rut. First Saturday after thanksgiving to the following Sunday. 8 days Muzzleloader season 5 days in December.
well if you kill bucks that have good genetics and can't kill the bad then you will soon only have bad genetics and small antlers.
I personally love the effect the ARs had on PA bucks. The over hunting of doe...not so much. So hopefully they dont do that to you. But in the areas my buddies and I hunt (Northeast, southeast, and southwest), we have seen much better bucks. Also following some pa facebook pages you see so many good bucks killed in PA these days, huge improvements from what we seen years ago.
Junior license holders and mentored youth may take a buck with a spike of more than three inches or two points to a side. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
There's absolutely no way to know the quality of a yearling bucks genetics. They have to get to a minimum of 2 1/2 before you can even consider it. Really you need to get older than that. If you give a deer 3 1/2 years, I can almost guarantee 95% of them will have at least 4pts on one side.
You're confusing quality deer management with trophy deer management. Age structure is more important to biologists than what a deer's rack scores.
