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Quality Deer Management
Management Buck
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<blockquote data-quote="BSK" data-source="post: 5551747" data-attributes="member: 17"><p>My "management buck" strategy has nothing to do with genetics and everything to do with fighting the constant battle with hunters high-grading out the best antlers. This is especially true on properties where any buck 3 1/2 or older is open to harvest. Hunters rapidly kill the top-end 3 1/2s that would have been true trophies at maturity. By offering "management bucks" as "free" bucks that don't go towards the property's/club's limit, I'm trying to encourage hunters to take out a buck that will never meet the owner's/club's standards no matter how old he gets. High-grading even occurs on properties with mature-buck-only limits. The year a buck turns 4 1/2, he gets killed if he is higher-end. The low-end mature bucks do not get killed at 4 1/2. This leaves just the low-end 4 1/2s to live on to 5 1/2 and 6 1/2.</p><p></p><p>In the past, just setting the buck limit at any buck 3 1/2 or older was good enough to get a high number of bucks to maturity. The reason being, the vast majority of hunters weren't good enough to kill a large number of 3 1/2 year-old bucks. That just isn't the case anymore. Hunters are getting really good at killing even mature bucks. What I'm seeing is a trend towards lower antler-point-count bucks at maturity. I strongly suspected this trend was occurring due to high-grading out the best antlers at 3 1/2 and 4 1/2. I was seeing properties with well-managed habitat producing a shockingly low percentage of mature bucks with 10 points and an equally shocking percentage that were only 6 points. Looking at census and harvest data, I would find that perhaps only 20% of 3 1/2 year-old bucks were 10-pointers but 90% of the 3 1/2 year-old bucks killed were 10-pointers. Hunters were wiping out the 10-pointers at 3 1/2 and few were living to maturity. The bucks living to maturity were the low-end 8s and 6s when they were 3 1/2.</p><p></p><p>By placing low-end 3 1/2s (and low-end mature bucks in a mature-buck-only harvest environment) on a bonus buck hit list, I was trying to give hunters more harvest opportunities that would hopefully take pressure off the top-end of each age-class. So far, the results have been beyond my wildest dreams. At the most extreme, I've seen a property that went from 25% of all mature bucks being 6 or fewer points up to where a 6-point mature buck is quite rare, and from only 20% of mature bucks having 9 or more points up to almost half of all mature bucks having 9 or more points (where it should be in that region without high-grading).</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="BSK, post: 5551747, member: 17"] My "management buck" strategy has nothing to do with genetics and everything to do with fighting the constant battle with hunters high-grading out the best antlers. This is especially true on properties where any buck 3 1/2 or older is open to harvest. Hunters rapidly kill the top-end 3 1/2s that would have been true trophies at maturity. By offering "management bucks" as "free" bucks that don't go towards the property's/club's limit, I'm trying to encourage hunters to take out a buck that will never meet the owner's/club's standards no matter how old he gets. High-grading even occurs on properties with mature-buck-only limits. The year a buck turns 4 1/2, he gets killed if he is higher-end. The low-end mature bucks do not get killed at 4 1/2. This leaves just the low-end 4 1/2s to live on to 5 1/2 and 6 1/2. In the past, just setting the buck limit at any buck 3 1/2 or older was good enough to get a high number of bucks to maturity. The reason being, the vast majority of hunters weren't good enough to kill a large number of 3 1/2 year-old bucks. That just isn't the case anymore. Hunters are getting really good at killing even mature bucks. What I'm seeing is a trend towards lower antler-point-count bucks at maturity. I strongly suspected this trend was occurring due to high-grading out the best antlers at 3 1/2 and 4 1/2. I was seeing properties with well-managed habitat producing a shockingly low percentage of mature bucks with 10 points and an equally shocking percentage that were only 6 points. Looking at census and harvest data, I would find that perhaps only 20% of 3 1/2 year-old bucks were 10-pointers but 90% of the 3 1/2 year-old bucks killed were 10-pointers. Hunters were wiping out the 10-pointers at 3 1/2 and few were living to maturity. The bucks living to maturity were the low-end 8s and 6s when they were 3 1/2. By placing low-end 3 1/2s (and low-end mature bucks in a mature-buck-only harvest environment) on a bonus buck hit list, I was trying to give hunters more harvest opportunities that would hopefully take pressure off the top-end of each age-class. So far, the results have been beyond my wildest dreams. At the most extreme, I've seen a property that went from 25% of all mature bucks being 6 or fewer points up to where a 6-point mature buck is quite rare, and from only 20% of mature bucks having 9 or more points up to almost half of all mature bucks having 9 or more points (where it should be in that region without high-grading). [/QUOTE]
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