deer limits in the 80's and 90's

[Headhunter]

Wondering if anyone has any old Tennessee hunting guides they could post pics of. Was talking to one guy recently who said the buck limit has never been over 3 and he believes it was 1 one year. I have several guides but I cannot find them.

 

[mike243]

Back in the 80's the limit here was 1 buck here, you could change units to hunt, my wife liked the season if I got 1 that first weekend, when it was raised I heard a lot of I hate deer season, after almost 39 years she still sez it a little but seasons almost out by then, come to think about it didn't hear it this season but haven't hunted much, she may start saying that about fishing lol

 

[redblood]

Middle Tennessee was 11 in the late 80s to 1997 i believe.

4 bucks with archery

3 with muzzleloader

4 with a gun

I think about 95 percent of the harvest were yearling buck. Quality was awful because everyone shot every antlered deer they saw. Now im amazed at the quality animals i get on camera , from those same farms where i used to only see 1.5 and an occasional 2.5 yr old deer

 

[tn24]

A little earlier.You can thank trap55555 for this. https://www.tndeer.com/threads/from-my-early-years.419943/

 

[GRIT]

I have some from the 80s cant get them right now but it use to be unit A and unit B. And some were around 1985ish you could kill 9 bucks and i think in 1987 in unit A they changed it to 10 bucks a year. I think

 

[backstraps]

A little earlier.You can thank trap55555 for this. https://www.tndeer.com/threads/from-my-early-years.419943/

Very Cool looking back
My how times have changed

 

[TheLBLman]

Back in that era, about the only bucks surviving to 2 1/2 were a few of the yearling spikes. Their survival was mainly because many hunters failed to see those spikes. Back then, many TN deer hunters were still using iron sights and didn't carry binoculars. Without optics, many spikes were just mistaken for does, which were illegal to kill.

 

[backyardtndeer]

I remember the limits being ridiculous when I first started hunting in 92.

 

[knightrider]

A little earlier.You can thank trap55555 for this. https://www.tndeer.com/threads/from-my-early-years.419943/

Thanks for posting, was sure great to see a family members name in the warden list from that long ago! I was 2

 

[bowtechgump]

I thought that it was 7 back in the 90's but it may have been 11. Either way, it was a ridiculous amount of bucks. If I recall no one, outside of archery, hunted does. I believe it was 4, 2, 4 but only up to a total of 7.

 

[Carlos]

Without hijacking, I'm wondering if the TWRA was making the decisions back then, and when the commission came into effect…

 

[bowtechgump]

Back in that era, about the only bucks surviving to 2 1/2 were a few of the yearling spikes. Their survival was mainly because many hunters failed to see those spikes. Back then, many TN deer hunters were still using iron sights and didn't carry binoculars. Without optics, many spikes were just mistaken for does, which were illegal to kill.

That's honestly a spot on description.....outside of the spikes being mistaken for does.....but that maybe true too. Sadly as I have stated before.....hunters in the 80's and 90's (not all but most) said "if it's brown it's down". Lawrence, Giles, Perry, Wayne and Lincoln were the big buck ground at that time. If you check, purely guessing, that was before they were tree farmed. Maury, Hickman, Dickson and Willamson were also in the top 10 for numbers.

 

[redblood]

Back in that era, about the only bucks surviving to 2 1/2 were a few of the yearling spikes. Their survival was mainly because many hunters failed to see those spikes. Back then, many TN deer hunters were still using iron sights and didn't carry binoculars. Without optics, many spikes were just mistaken for does, which were illegal to kill.

It was tough for sure. And since most hunters shot any buck, and 1.5 old bucks are the dumbest animals in the woods, opening morning sounded like a war zone. I dont miss that! In many ways, these are the good ole days of deer hunting.

 

[bowtechgump]

Without hijacking, I'm wondering if the TWRA was making the decisions back then, and when the commission came into effect…

I don't believe TWRA makes any fact based decisions on what they do. They just make the rules to fit the requirements and requests of the mass.

 

[bowtechgump]

It was tough for sure. And since most hunters shot any buck, and 1.5 old bucks are the dumbest animals in the woods, opening morning sounded like a war zone. I dont miss that! In many ways, these are the good ole days of deer hunting.

This cartoon was comical.....but true....growing up. (Meaning the woods were really loaded with hunters and no deer was safe.)

 

[redblood]

This cartoon was comical.....but true....growing up. (Meaning the woods were really loaded with hunters and no deer was safe.)

Pretty accurate.

 

[bowtechgump]

Pretty accurate.

It truly is.....you park a truck on the roadside......4 more park beside you. They would hunt that spot because "you were on a deer". I have taken friends hunting on public in the 90's and used a "ghost " truck.

 

[Ridgeline300]

We were allowed 11 bucks here in middle TN in the late 80's up until 97 if memory serves me correctly. In 97 that dropped to 2 then think it went to 3 per year in the next year or two then back to what we currently have. We were allowed 11 like I said but hardly anyone I knew killed more than a couple because we just didn't see them around here. Killing a spike was a big deal and you couldn't hardly wait until lunch to run by the store and see what new Polaroid pictures were hanging up. 90% of the pictures were 1.5 year olds. I could easily count on one hand how many 3.5's or older were killed that I knew of. It was a drastic change in the buck limit in 97 that was needed and it didn't take but a couple years to start seeing a major difference. I went from having to hunt really hard just to kill a couple spikes to killing a couple 8pts every year easily. After a few years of that we started letting 2.5 and some 3.5's walk. Crazy how far it has come, went from a 2.5 year old 6 pt being the talk of the town to if it score less than 120 then nobody bats an eye.

 

[redblood]

We were allowed 11 bucks here in middle TN in the late 80's up until 97 if memory serves me correctly. In 97 that dropped to 2 then think it went to 3 per year in the next year or two then back to what we currently have. We were allowed 11 like I said but hardly anyone I knew killed more than a couple because we just didn't see them around here. Killing a spike was a big deal and you couldn't hardly wait until lunch to run by the store and see what new Polaroid pictures were hanging up. 90% of the pictures were 1.5 year olds. I could easily count on one hand how many 3.5's or older were killed that I knew of. It was a drastic change in the buck limit in 97 that was needed and it didn't take but a couple years to start seeing a major difference. I went from having to hunt really hard just to kill a couple spikes to killing a couple 8pts every year easily. After a few years of that we started letting 2.5 and some 3.5's walk. Crazy how far it has come, went from a 2.5 year old 6 pt being the talk of the town to if it score less than 120 then nobody bats an eye.

I had a rack stack from those yrs that i stumbled on when we moved to this farm in 2015. I just shook my head. All those yearling bucks i killed. No wonder i never killed a good deer until 1993 and that was a fluke. But that was the hubter mindset at that time. If it was legal, you shot it. Everybody did, monkey see monkey do. Its just what we did

 

[tellico4x4]

I started deer hunting in 1970 in Warren & Van Buren Co. Season was 5 days, 1 buck and total statewide harvest was like 3500. We also went to Ft Campbell and stood in line each morning at the Provost Marshall's office to see IF we got a spot to hunt that day. Remember sleeping in car at Waffle House parking lot with dad ( low budget hunting). Good times.