I have heard people say many times that there just is no "quick fix" to a state with a lack of older bucks (bigger racks) in the huntable herd...........PA has had a 8 year process now trying to change the age structure of their bucks and they certainly are still not where they would like to be (although certainly moving in the right direction). Choices for "fixing" are what?? AR's??......spread restrictions, or just passing on bucks and hoping no one else shoots them and sucks them into a combine. Pretty limited and ALL are certainly sloooooooooow fixes with results needing to be measured over many years to even debate the amout of success or lack there of..........more problematic is they all depend on the hunters judgement/discipline......tall order in heavily hunted states. Why is a moratorium on bucks NEVER even considered?? The results would be DRASTIC and nearly immediate.........and a moratorium combined with AR's could be absolutely unreal in the results it could produce. NY killed roughly 106,000 bucks last year........of which (guessing) at least 80,000 were 1.5.......just trying to use round numbers for ease of discussion. If a 2 year moratorium was in place starting next year in 2012 we could expect somewhere in the neighborhood of 80,000 additional 3.5 year olds and 26,000 more deer OLDER then that to be roaming the woods.........surely that number would be even higher because these are only the bucks killed I am counting. Natural causes of death would occur and car kills and poaching and so on but they are happening now as well so it shouldn't be too much of a change. Imagine the anticipation of the 2012 season...............now to keep every crazed up loon from shooting everything in the woods and sending us back to square one.......during those 2 years you either implement a 4 pt AR and/or drop down to one buck per year. So guys would be unleashed on a new herd with plenty more older deer but in those 2 years off the babies have also now become 2 yr olds...........the AR's and/or 1 buck rule would keep most of them alive to insure the 3 year olds would be there again next year and the next and the next. Problems?? Guys want to hunt. So for 2 years it's doe only, this takes care of your doe reduction duties and will further improve the herd by balancing the ratio. It would be a TOUGH 2 years for many guys to hold the trigger but better 2 then 10 or 20. If you HAVE to kill a buck you can always be in PA or Ohio in a couple hours where they sell buck tags for all. License sales (revenue) would plummet. Solution............if you don't buy your license during the moratorium you won't be able to come 2012. Team effort, you're either in or your out, no cherry picking. Guys would never agree to no bucks for 2 whole years.............beyond rediculous because 90% of the guys in this state don't kill a buck for that long now!!! But, a legit concern so a possible solution may be an alternating 1 year moratorium plan which would probably take 4 years to see the same results but make some whiners a little happier. Every other year you can hunt bucks until the population gets to where they want it.......does always in season. Is there a reason this would not work that I am just blindly missing??? Thanks.
It would work and it's a great plan IMHO. Marketing it and getting buy in would be the problem. Hell, look at what happened to Gary Alt, and his plan wasn't even that drastic.
Agreed, it is a great plan, but getting guys to buy in would be near impossible. In PA Harrisburg may burn if this happened.
You could never get the masses to buy in. One of Alt's "other" plans was a lottery for buck tags. Again, the masses ain;t buying into it. If you can't convince the masses to willingly not shoot every thing they see, you can fix the problem with ANY regulation, unless you go so severe that everyone would revolt & still shoot what they wanted. You should have heard some of the blatant & disgusting comments people made about how they'd shoot every buck they saw when the AR's were introduced, and by the numbers of dead bucks people found the 1st few years, they followed thru.
Yes buy/lease some land and work with the surrounding land owners. That is the quickest fix you're going to get. You must keep the state out of mix if you want it quick fix for anything. The CO-OP's around here are producing some HUGE bucks, I am talking in the 170's
I was once a member of club in Mississippi that had 20,000 acres of river bottom land. We went 3 years without killing a buck. Hammered the does at a rate of 300 a year. You wouldn't believe the size bucks that were killed for the first few years after they opened up the buck hunting. It was unreal. However, it slowing starting going down hill and eventually after several years there was no longer a noticeable difference. It works, but you need to follow with extreme anter restrictions IMO if you expect to kill truly giant deer.
It won't work for social reasons. Why not just implement AR's (points and/or spread) that you know would protect 95% or of the yearling bucks and skip the headach and potential (probable) law suits? I like the KISS method best. Actually I think it would be best to phase AR's in by protecting about 70% of the yearling bucks the first year or two to soften the blow and then increase the restrictions to protect 95% of them. If you want deer management for trophy bucks on a state wide basis I wouldn't hold my breath. It's not scientifically necessary for a healthy heard and the general non hunting public (voters) frown upon trophy hunting.
If I was this concerned about killing big/mature bucks every season... I think I would devote more time to charity or something. Is this the biggest issue in some people's lives?
Change the last sentence to "Then you have people who want to "succeed" at it", and you will be close to why I hunt deer. It's shooting deer for crying out loud, whether they are mature or not. Geesh!! Good at what? Killing mature bucks? Or, making your state produce more mature bucks? I believe that was the OP's desire.
Of course this would be the toughest hurdle.........my theory on that is........you are gonna have a large group of extremely pissed off guys NO MATTER WHAT gets done so screw it, give the DEC guys something to do and if you get caught with a dead buck in a non buck year you lose hunting rights for 5 years. The beauty of this plan as I see it is it will only sting for a short amount of time and before you know it you are back hunting bucks. I think back to the deer I killed 2 years ago and it seems like it was last week........time flies and before anyone could get TOO mad it would all be over. Another thing that I hear you speak of often Ryan is changing the mindset of hunters..........well wouldn't this be the PERFECT way to make that practice become more normal to guys in the woods?? As guys sit in their stands on doe years and start to see bigger and more bucks walk by not only will they get excited for the day when they can shoot but they wil maybe realize there are now more then one in a million and become more patient. The reason guys HATE AR's is because they feel like they will be watching bucks all season they can't shoot because the ones that meet the regs are hard to come by...........now imagine someone sitting in Kansas, Iowa, Ohio, Illinois being told they have a 4 pt AR.........they would laugh and say "who cares??"........because they are confident they can and will see bucks better then that..........but when a guy is told he has an AR he feels sets the bar too high for his area it becomes a ball and chain instead. Outfitters can put 140" minimums in place and no one there will say a word. Put one in Florida and no one would leave the house.
The way I see AR's as they stand right now is they simply change the majority of bucks killed from spikes and 4 pts..........to 6's and 8's. In other words the average buck killed goes from 40"-60" to 80"-100". An improvement for sure but if you are going to make a change why not make a drastic one?? In two years time you could walk into the woods and have a LEGIT shot at a 3.5 year old buck............and every year after that. I have never heard another plan that could offer those results. No one is saying anything about "trophy" anything.............just a realistic thought while on your stand that a 130" deer is actually out there would make all the difference in the world. Like I have said before.........change is coming to NY and it's coming soon. It's just a shame that they will do something ultra conservative and lame like a 3 pt AR and then evaluate it's results in 15 years and put up a pie chart saying it made things 2% better.
All I know is hunting a deer herd like what I saw in Illinois was pretty damn fun.......I don't know how anyone who hunts could argue that they would not enjoy that. I have no illusions that NY is going to magicallt change into a big buck state overnight and honestly couldn't care less if it does...........but change IS coming and if that change puts a few more deer in the woods and creates a "normal" behaving herd with a legit chance at some decent bucks then I gotta be honest.............I won't be pissed
I don't see that it has much if anything to do with being "good" at something..........it's just plain more fun.
I like the idea myself - since I enjoy seeing/hunting big bucks...but again - trophy hunting is still for the minority. I don't like the idea of a child or first time hunter not being able to shoot any deer they want...again, we all have a passion for bowhunting and big bucks - but to everyone else it's just a stupid deer that needs to be controlled - and I can't argue with that either We let the little ones walk at our place - but anyone that it still looking for their first buck can have at 'em if they want - my dad and I get too big a kick out of seeing someone excited about their deer and potentially hooking them for life. ...and I'm not so sure right now that there are too many Bucks & Does in my area of IL right now...but that's another topic...
