Each year I would take all of the trail-camera pictures and create a "Do NOT shoot!" pictorial of top-end 2 1/2s. Club went so far as to print out the pictorial and hang it in every shooting house. The difference in the quality of mature bucks has been dramatic, but again, took about 3-4 years.
Great idea about posting those pics in shooting houses!
The concept of hunters' "antler high-grading" seems to be a bit confusing to many.
If we were "harvesting" (killing) trees in our woods,
but
ONLY killed the very tallest, widest oak trees,
while leaving the "scrub" locust and other less desirable trees,
what would we have in our forests for the next years' "harvests"?
The term timber high-grading is often heard,
when only the very best trees are cut,
leaving "scrub" trees to take over that forest,
greatly de-grading the future.
This seems just the opposite of
"conservation"?
Or, another example,
imagine a cattle farm advertising they sell angus bulls for breeding stock,
yet the most promising bulls are killed when 2 years old, leaving the less promising ones available as mature
"breeding" stock.
To a large degree we create our own destinies.
If you want to kill an above averaged antlered mature buck,
that buck has to be allowed to live to maturity,
not killed because he was an above average 2 1/2 or 3 1/2.
And, antler restrictions often do more harm than good
regarding high-grading our best young bucks.
Areas with antler restrictions (such as 4 on a side, 9 points, gross "x" score, etc.)
usually have worse high-grading than areas allowing "any" antlered buck.
Go figure.