Over the summer I purchased a small piece of property to hunt on and now am becoming very frustrated because all the bucks I am seeing are not going to make 13"(must be in my county). Does anybody have any ideas on what I can do so next year I will have some shooter bucks?? So far this season I have counted 9 bucks that won't make 13, and 2 that I might take the chance and shoot because they are gonna be very close to 13.

That's the reason I would never buy property on a AR county!

Let them grow another year?????????

Let them grow, sometimes the NEVER get out of that and yea...never buy place in AR county. Sorry.

How old are the bucks that you're seeing? If they're young bucks then they need to grow to maturity. I don't mean this to insult but in my experience there's lots of guys in the field that have no clue how to age a deer.

Shooting only mature bucks is the only way to get the age structure and antler development you want. It takes time and patience to get there. The only way to shoot a mature buck is to know one when you see it and to know a young buck when you see it.

Mature bucks are a different animal than the young ones. They won't often present you with a shot. They're too smart for that. So you have to wait 'em out and be patient.

Prime example: My lease is 7000 acres low fence in South Texas. Our aerial survey shows that the bucks are pretty evenly numbered 1/3 immature, 1/3 mid-aged and 1/3 mature. We have 1.5 does to every buck. Last weekend I counted 27 bucks and 10 does. Only three of the bucks were mature.

The old bucks obviously stay well hidden. The does too because we hammer 'em pretty hard to keep the balance in check.

I would check with surrounding neighbors to see if they are on a MLD project. If so, you could join up. And if I'm not mistaken, ARs do not apply to an MLD III

Landpirate, sounds like you have a great ratio! We are getting there, its just taken some time.

Yep, this is the first year that we've been told that we don't have to take does. In the past it's been mandatory to take our doe quota before taking any bucks. It's finally paying off. Now we just gotta knock down some our inferior bucks and we'll be doing really good.

You typically don't see the bigger bucks nearly to the extent you see the youngsters. I probably had 6-8 sub-AR bucks that hung around all summer. Now that the deer are moving, all of my neighbors are starting to see bigger bucks that no one saw all summer.

Protein,food plots and time will get you there. I did the same thing as you and bought my place back in 07 just now seeing the results, some really nice bucks.

www.buckandbassranch.com

How big is your place? Maybe the neighbors have bigger ranches and they are shooting off the bucks after they hit the 13" inch mark. AR's work wonders - I went from seeing one legal (13" buck) buck every 4-5 years to now seeing a legal buck about every third outing.

I guess that my main question was whether or not food plots and some protein would make these bucks mature into legal bucks. the ones i am seeing while in the stand are young bucks, but on the cameras i am seeing mature deer with very small inside spreads. will food plots and protein feeders help these deer grow wider spreads?