EXTREMELY interesting topic!
At the end of the day...here is the truth as I see it.
Personally , I have no problem with anyone supporting our sport by hunting legally, ethically, responsibly. KEYWORD-SUPPORTING (not hurting with negative P/R)
My credentials:
I have killed more whitetails with a bow in more places in more states in more environments (mostly high pressured public), than most bowhunters could ever imagine. 338. (insert chest thumping pic here)
It has been a STUDY on anatomy, blood trailing, deer behavior, and other hunters.
It is an absolute MIRACLE I stayed married for 41 years through it all. (great wife)
Here is what I know.
1-it is very hard to make generalizations about how deer as a group will act in a given environment.
2-deer, especially the mature (NOT necessarily BIG) ones have dramatically different personalities (think mature German Shepard)
3-IMO..."MATURE" as far as a hunter who is trying to gauge his hunting skillset is concerned, SHOULD mean "human interaction" level of experience for any deer.
and NOT size of antler or body.
I have seen 1.5 year old heavily pressured with MANY negative human scent/interaction encounters act like VERY mature, wary deer. And become almost impossible to get close enough to, to kill.
I have, and do hunt "yard deer". I think the kill count for me on yard deer is up to 4 now. EXTREMELY stressful, not all that enjoyable type of hunting. Why? Because everything has to be perfect to execute the shot and keep the animal on the small parcel as it dies. I do this type of hunting strictly to take a few flower eaters off this property and to fill freezers.
Make no mistake. Killing the deer I do in that residential setting is NOTHING like killing the deer I do at AEDC, Prentice Cooper, Beaver Dam, Cedar Creek, or any other public high pressured area I've ever hunted. Deer walk across my scent trail in any of those public hunting areas and they are GONE!
In the yard situation they follow my footsteps to the tree, or hot tub.
Not the same animal.
Even the older age class deer can act different. They just aren't always as wary about human scent.
As an example...I know a guy who killed a 180+ in a residential setting. It was huge. He was proud of that buck and was very nervous at making the shot with his bow at the time.
A few months later I saw a video of a man feeding this buck in his backyard from a few feet away.
He had known the buck from a button. It was the same 180 that the other guy killed a few years later. The hunter had no idea it had been hand fed shortly before it was killed.
Legal-Yes.
Nothing wrong there.
But I am sure other residential deer have different personalities. FOR CERTAIN!
Rutting deer act different than out of rut deer. Sex tends to make them less wary but not always.
I have captured trail cam photos of the same bucks in different sub-divisions miles apart. Still not as spooky as their pressured counterparts but obviously traveling miles in the rut.
I also believe that killing a hunter wary mature buck is MUCH more about HIM making a mistaken you being there at the right time than YOU being a skilled hunter.
There are VERY few hunters who hunt pressured deer, on PUBLIC ACCESS property, that regularly kill mature bucks that the hunter was aware of before he killed it. There are simply too many variables out of the hunters control...mostly other people.
At the end of the day we are ALL hunters. We should be held responsible for making our sport look good wether helping a landowner control pests or doing our part as wildlife managers.
We all need to stick together and HAVE FUN! Life is short!