"Experimental regulation," so is there a timeframe attached to the AR's? Are they looking to re-evaluate their data after a certain amount of years?

depending on the acreage, sometimes the hunters know whats best for the herd thats the only argue i have against ar's, they have worked for several, and then alot of times your left with situations like ohanlon87's where you see more bucks/does but the bucks are tall narrow racks. and the herd will keep producing bucks like this because you cant shoot them. On the other hand this buck would have been killed when it was just nubs without ar's

Needless to say, my position and agreement with his comments are well-known in these forums. No one can get the QDM cult foaming at the mouth any quicker than myself. And I'm sure the comments that were made and which I have given below, are sure to send them reeling.

Thank you for sharing.

"Based on 38 years of solid data from research that was designed to answer these questions, those older “narrow-rack” deer likely were spikes as yearlings. If hunters take advantage of the extra tag and harvest spikes at 1 ½ years of age, this may reduce the incidence of those older “management / cull” bucks slipping through the cracks and contributing to the gene pool later in life."

"In addition to the research conducted by TPWD for the past 38 years, there are many non-TPWD research projects that clearly indicate that, with few exceptions, yearling antler quality is a good predictor of future antler quality. The debate has been over for quite some time. The question isn’t whether spikes “catch up” but rather, how much culling intensity is required to improve antler quality within the population by XX%. That question remains unanswered. Can a spike grow up to be a quality deer? Sure (depending on your standards)! But with very few exceptions, they won’t grow up to be as big (antler-wise) as their 6-point and 8-point yearling counterparts. And 6-point and 8-point yearlings are more common than many people realize. Many mistake those deer as 2.5-year olds."

I'm glad I nailed it, cam. I've read too many management plans lately to understand that what's happening is a form of mgmt, it's just [tinkle] poor mgmt.

That may be true, but it's a helluva lot better than the management taking place across the vast majority of east TX prior to ARs. Which was none. If a particular place wants to do it's own management TPWD has now made that pretty simple to do.