Can't say as I've ever read or heard any "meat hunters" express contempt for trophy hunters.

I've heard plenty of contempt for AR, and after initially supporting it, have developed some myself. Not a fan of it anymore - no biological basis for it, purely window dressing to sell HR in PA.

I've been hunting since 1988. 4 of those years I lived outside of PA, but still hunted deer in PA. I have NEVER passed on a clean, ethical shot at a legal buck in any season. If PA did away with AR, I would shoot the first legal buck I have an opportunity to shoot each year.

I understand somewhat the thrill of trophy hunting, and I don't think it has anything to do with extra testosterone or small genitalia. Some guys like it, and that's OK. They have the time, $ and resources to invest their lives in shooting a deer they want to put on a wall. I like looking at mounts of big bucks but I'd never, ever - even if I shot a state record - spend hundreds of dollars to hang a dead animal's head on my wall.

I choose different priorities in my life, and spend a fraction of the time and money hunting and fishing that I did before I had kids. AR's are ridiculous. No biological benefit in PA. Maybe on 1,000 acre high fence operations. But not on wild, free ranging deer on public land.

Big antlers no longer thrill me.In the last 20 years, I have shot bucks for no particular reason. Passed on trophy bucks and taken a spindly 6 pointer an hour later.Went to a flintlock 10 years ago and still have no rhyme or reason to take any particular antlered deer and I'm peed off that the choice of bucks was narrowed down for no real reason...WF

Antler restrictions isn’t about what hunters like or don’t like nor should it be. It is about what deer need in order to be in the correct biological balance. The deer themselves are the ones that proved antler restrictions, or some other method of protecting younger bucks for an additional year, was and still are needed.
 R.S. Bodenhorn

The deer themselves are the ones that proved antler restrictions, or some other method of protecting younger bucks for an additional year, was and still are needed.

Just exactly how have they done that. What biological reason for doing that has the PGC documented as succeding as a result of AR?

Yes it was a ranch and they do feed with protien, and I didn't consider it deer hunting is was more like shooting,He told me that there is very little public land to hunt in Texas, and it goes on a draw like pymie to get to hunt it not sure its for a day or the season, the ranch manager told me that the state will set up feeders and blinds that you will hunt out of. The ranch bordered a state park and it was the last day of the season when I was there but the game wardens shut down the park while they hunted, it seamed like it was very very controled hunt with the amount of wardens I saw. I was suprised with the size of the deer thinking since they were feed they would have good body wieght, but the biggest one taken was 143lbs, thats not field dressed.

ORIGINAL: RSB

Antler restrictions isn’t about what hunters like or don’t like nor should it be. It is about what deer need in order to be in the correct biological balance. The deer themselves are the ones that proved antler restrictions, or some other method of protecting younger bucks for an additional year, was and still are needed.
 R.S. Bodenhorn

What is the biological basis of protecting younger bucks? What biological difference does it make to allow a 1.5 year old 4 pt to become a 2.5 year old 7 or 8 point?

What about 1.5 year old bucks that might have superior genes and can be harvested as a 6 or 8 point? How does allowing them to be harvested improve the health of the deer herd?

Why are hunters allowed to harvest button bucks if AR's are so important to the health of the deer herd?

ORIGINAL: World Famous

Big antlers no longer thrill me.In the last 20 years, I have shot bucks for no particular reason. Passed on trophy bucks and taken a spindly 6 pointer an hour later.Went to a flintlock 10 years ago and still have no rhyme or reason to take any particular antlered deer and I'm peed off that the choice of bucks was narrowed down for no real reason...WF

In your case...why not take a doe or two?

Ironhed

ORIGINAL: rsquared

ORIGINAL: RSB

Antler restrictions isn’t about what hunters like or don’t like nor should it be. It is about what deer need in order to be in the correct biological balance. The deer themselves are the ones that proved antler restrictions, or some other method of protecting younger bucks for an additional year, was and still are needed.
 R.S. Bodenhorn

What is the biological basis of protecting younger bucks? What biological difference does it make to allow a 1.5 year old 4 pt to become a 2.5 year old 7 or 8 point?

What about 1.5 year old bucks that might have superior genes and can be harvested as a 6 or 8 point? How does allowing them to be harvested improve the health of the deer herd?

Why are hunters allowed to harvest button bucks if AR's are so important to the health of the deer herd?

All I hear are chirping crickets . . .

Somebody? Anybody? Bueller?

What positive biological impact does AR - on its own merits - have on the PA deer herd?

ORIGINAL: rsquared

ORIGINAL: RSB

Antler restrictions isn’t about what hunters like or don’t like nor should it be. It is about what deer need in order to be in the correct biological balance. The deer themselves are the ones that proved antler restrictions, or some other method of protecting younger bucks for an additional year, was and still are needed.
 R.S. Bodenhorn

What is the biological basis of protecting younger bucks? What biological difference does it make to allow a 1.5 year old 4 pt to become a 2.5 year old 7 or 8 point?

What about 1.5 year old bucks that might have superior genes and can be harvested as a 6 or 8 point? How does allowing them to be harvested improve the health of the deer herd?

Why are hunters allowed to harvest button bucks if AR's are so important to the health of the deer herd?

 
The biological need for antler restrictions or some other method of keeping additional for the next year’s breeding season did come form the facts the deer them selves were providing.
 
Prior to antler restrictions every WCO in the state was required to collect the breeding and reproductive data from every female deer they removed from the highways between February 1 and May 31 every year. We had been doing that since back in the late 1970’s so there was a large database for each county and area of the state. There was also a jawbone collected from each of the does so the breeding and reproductive rates could also have an age structure connected with it.
 
Here are some facts concerning the breeding rates during the five years prior to antler restrictions as compared to the previous ten years of breeding data.
 
89% of the counties had a decline in either the adult of juvenile doe breeding rates.
 
55% of the counties had a decline in the adult doe breeding rates.
 
68% of the counties had a decline in the juvenile doe breeding rates.
 
35% of the counties had a decline in both adult and juvenile doe breeding rates.
 
The declining breeding rates were showing up in all areas of the state even though there were a few counties that had not yet experienced the decline in their breeding rates.
 
When you put all of the northern tier counties together and compared then there was an 11.3% decline in the breeding rates in the five years prior to antler restrictions.
 
In the Southern tier counties minus the special regulations counties the breeding rate decline was 9.0%.
 
Then by comparing the breeding rates for the special regulations counties where hunters could get unlimited doe licenses and permitted to harvest basically as many antlerless deer as they wanted and could find even there the breeding rates had declined by 7.5%. That was pretty much proof that the problem could not be corrected by simply harvesting more does, especially when or where many hunters refuse to even shoot does but have no reservations about shooting bucks.
 
The bottom line was hunters were harvesting about 80-90% of all of the antlered bucks each fall. Then when the next fall rut came along the only bucks available to do the breeding were those that had been last year’s button bucks and now just 1 ½ year old bucks. Not that there was anything wrong with them breeding, it was just that there were far too many does all cycling at the same time and not enough bucks to get them all, of in many cases, even a high percentage of the bred. It was taking over five months just to get 80-90% of the adult does bred and that is a simply pathetic breeding result.
 
With that evidence any professional deer manager could see there was a need to establish a better buck to doe ratio to improve the breeding rates and times.
 
And it has worked to get the better breeding rates and times too.
 
Here in Elk County where I collected the breeding data over the past few decades the adult doe breeding rate improved from 84.4% in the five years before the affects of antler restrictions to an adult doe breeding rate of 97.1% since antler restrictions.
 
Though many people want to make it sound like it wasn’t needed and throw out all kinds of red herring detractors the facts are that the deer themselves proved antler restrictions were needed and they are also proving it is working as intended as a benefit to the deer themselves.
 
As for any genetic high grading argument that is not even a valid argument for anyone that understands how genetics among deer populations are influenced if you consider the fact that nearly all bucks, both great and poor, have always been breeding before the harvests. That includes the lowliest spikes to the biggest and oldest bucks in the population. It has always been that way but before antler restrictions we had far fewer bucks of any age class but the youngest to do the breeding. If it were possible to high grade it would have already happened during the five decades we protected only bucks that didn’t even have a 3-inch spike.    
 
R.S. Bodenhorn

After reading that post from RSB, I gather that 1.5 year old bucks breeding is not the problem, but instead, the problem is we have too many does going into heat at the same. But RSB claims additional doe harvest isnt the solution..but yet the PGC jacks up doe tag allocations.


Sounds like the PGC is trying to "fix" the B:D ratio by killing more does by making it easier to kill a doe while making it harder to kill bucks, even though "simply harvesting more does" does not correct the problem (again )




Lots of double talk in that post

I understand that...I was never fooled when the PGC rolled it out. Hmm, more doe tags and tougher buck rules, I wonder how that will work out . The problem I have is that the PGC claims there isnt enough bucks to breed, but yet when there is more doe tags allocated, more button bucks will get mowed down as antlerless deer. It's a numbers game, since you know "us hunters" have itchy trigger fingers



I just find it amusing how the PGC finds new ways to "spread the message"

HR didn't have anything to do with the higher breeding rates, right?

Why would the PGC want higher breeding rates when they're trying to reduce the deer population statewide anyway?

What Should Hunters Expect from An Antler Restriction Program?

Although programs using antler restrictions may have several effects on a deer herd, people should have realistic expectations on what they may see accomplished. Some changes will be obvious and others, if they occur, may be subtle and difficult to note in the field.

Buck Numbers, Size and Age
•More young bucks surviving the hunting season and into the older age classes.
•Higher overall buck numbers at the start of subsequent hunting seasons.
•A large portion of each Fall's buck population would be young bucks that do not meet the minimum harvest criteria and therefore could not be harvested.
•The extent of the age and size that some bucks obtain will depend on habitat quality and the specifics of the antler restriction program.

Breeding Behavior and Success
•No significant change in breeding success or timing should be expected from reducing harvest of yearling bucks in New York. The timing of the rut is largely tied to seasonal changes (day length).
•More bucks, including older bucks, may increase the amount of buck sign such as rubs and scrapes. While this may impact hunter satisfaction, these social factors of deer are not expected to noticeably impact the timing of deer breeding in New York.
•Yearling (1.5 year old) bucks will continue to sire a substantial portion of the offspring despite presence of more older bucks.

Harvest Prospects
•The population management goal for an area would not change, but herd composition and harvest opportunity would change.
•Implementation of antler restrictions results in an initial period of significantly reduced buck harvest and somewhat lower buck harvest potential for the long term.
•Hunters must be more selective and a portion of the bucks they see will have to be passed up.

I guess the bucks were telling them something different on the other side of the state line than they were on this side.

ORIGINAL: psu_fish

After reading that post from RSB, I gather that 1.5 year old bucks breeding is not the problem, but instead, the problem is we have too many does going into heat at the same. But RSB claims additional doe harvest isnt the solution..but yet the PGC jacks up doe tag allocations.


Sounds like the PGC is trying to "fix" the B:D ratio by killing more does by making it easier to kill a doe while making it harder to kill bucks, even though "simply harvesting more does" does not correct the problem (again )




Lots of double talk in that post

 
You are correct that 1 ½ year old bucks breeding does is not a problem and that just harvesting more does generally isn’t going to be enough to correct a buck to doe ratio if hunters are also permitted to harvest virtually any buck with a piece of antler on his head. That has been proven in several studies of the subject in various areas besides Pennsylvania.
 
It seems that what you don’t understand about deer management though is the first and most important thing in deer or any other wildlife management is not to try keeping more of anything than the food supply can sustain. That is why we had to reduce the total deer population and that has nothing to due with trying to balance the buck to doe ratios. The fact is you can only keep so many deer through the winter and if you keep too many the deer actually damage their food supply then they reduce their own numbers though both winter mortality and reduced fawn survival rates. Once that starts happening you will have fewer and fewer deer until the population gets low enough the habitat can start to recover enough to allow for some population increase. The reality of that though is that once the habitat/deer relationship reaches that point any population increases will only occur during short periods of ideal environmental conditions and then crash again when those ideal conditions no longer exist for a year of two.
 
To have the correct deer management you have to first and foremost harvest the number of deer that brings the total deer population down to the where it is matched to the available winter habitat. In some areas and some years deer can use all of the habitat in their home range. But, is some areas and some years the only habitat with any winter value for deer is what is within relatively small pockets of wintering grounds habitat. I have seen years with dozens of winter mortality deer within just a few hundred yards of all the good browse they could have eaten, but that great habitat was of no value to them because they couldn’t get to it because of all the deep snow.
 
Then after you have the deer population reduced to the correct balance with its habitat (read that as food supply) then if you want to have the best possible deer numbers for the future you want to have the correct buck/doe ratio that maximizes the breeding, reproductive and fawn recruitment rates. If you have the best possible fawn birth and recruitment rates you will also have the maximum number of deer available again for the next fall breeding and hunting seasons.
 
Maximizing your fawn recruitment simply means hunters can and need to harvest the same number of deer that fall as what had been recruited into the herd that year just to get back to that correct level of over winter population again. That is how deer management works but the problem is hunters demand carrying excess deer through the winter, which simply means they end with lower fawn recruitment than we should be getting and that then also means you have fewer deer to harvest the next fall.
 
Too many hunters just fail or refuse to accept the FACT that there is a whole lot more that will influence future deer numbers then hunters harvesting too many. In fact, deer numbers are more likely to decline and stay low in the areas where hunters under harvest and carry excess into the winter than where hunters have over harvested the popuolation.
 
Of course when we get a mild winter, like was are having this year, we can carry more deer through the winter. But, that can also lead to even bigger population crashes at some point in the future if hunters don’t harvest those excess deer that result from mild winters before we have our next normal or perhaps even harsh winter.
 
R.S. Bodenhorn           

demand carrying excess deer through the winter, which simply means they end with lower fawn recruitment than we should be getting and that then also means you have fewer deer to harvest the next fall.

That must be why we harvested 203,247 bucks in 2001 and 122,930 last year.