Have seen more than a few deer I'd gladly use my buck tag on to clean up the gene pool and let the bigger ones walk.

Talk to a wildlife biologist, your point is moot in a low fence environment, high fence yes it could have an effect though, but thats why MLD exists. The whole point of the AR is to get some age on bucks and its working.

From what I have seen of certain counties, especially East of 45, they work. I have seen more big deer come out of that country than any other time, processors in the area will tell you that the dynamics of the deer they take in have changed dramatically, and most hunters I know will say the same. From many of the posts on this forum about culls and deer that AR's are protecting, the addition of an age restriction wouldn't help at all.

I can see the need for it in certain areas and the "why", especially areas that are dominated by small tracks of land, but it would irritate the heck out of me to be restricted and I wouldn't hunt in an AR county for that reason alone.

Maybe your auto-correct is really wonky but that's a deer not a toad.

Has made a huge difference in my area and surrounding

No matter that he’s ugly he’s big.. there no arguing that what so ever

Is that a 10 ft white H brace in the back? I smell dookie

Yes, they work.
Are they perfect? No. But that one rule has done more to improve the age class of the deer taken than anything before or since. Most of the early opponents are now converts at this point.

Yes AR's work for what they were initially intended to do, and that is to give the bucks a chance to age in order to increase the deer populations in areas that were nearly shot out of older class bucks.
It never was about growing big antlers as many still believe was the intent. Duh, the longer a buck lives the bigger antlers they usually grow!
I hunted a ranch years back before AR's and I can tell you from persoanl experience if you saw a buck back then with a small fork or hardened antler you had better shoot it, or the neighbor next door would.
I watched and passed on a small buck one time that jumped the fence and POW was the next thing I immediately heard.
Since AR's several year back came into being, the deer herd has grown and there are more and larger bucks on that same ranch.
AR's have been !!!!

This is correct but there are a large number of deer that need to be killed to keep them from breeding. There needs to be something in place for this to happen.

That's where MLD is in place to fix that problem.

Same with ours

??? the deer was shot on small acreage that backed up to ray roberts COE land, completely low fence...

Mine too. Best thing that ever happened to our area.

You be the judge.

I agree, back in the 80's, even 90's in my area some of those deer you just posted would have made the paper, now they are the norm.

The ones that are now deceased were all management deer. I was asked not to post the few trophies.

Yeah, a 100-120" buck in Mills county would stop traffic in the 80s, and a 140 was nearly unheard of and would win any contest easily. Now there are a lot of 130s and 140s, with several 150s taken every year, and even the occasional B&C deer. I hunted 30 years before I killed my first legit 10 pt buck; I've already passed on two this year.

I agree there needs to be something in place for old cull deer. I think you'll see a further easing of MLD programs in the next few years to help with that.

I was in my late 20's before I got my first 10. I keep picking on my son telling him just how good he has it. We didn't even see deer most trips in my teens.

I'll admit that I hated the idea in the beginning. BUT, it has worked out nicely in the long run.

I think you guys got your logic mixed up?---there is no way there were as many deer in the past. Go back to the 70's, you could hunt a full year and see 3 doe. Today you can see 30 a weekend.

AR's are working great up by me NE of Paris. We are seeing more big bucks than we ever have. On camera at least. We have some neighbors that shot two bucks last week that would be close to the biggest I have seen in person and I didn't have them on camera. I have 4-5 big bucks on camera for a 320 acre property and seems like are doe to buck ratio is almost 1:1.

I have been hunting the property for 22 years.

What some people fail to see is some places just don't have great genetics to start with and will prob never have lots of big high scoring deer. Deer hunting is like real estate its all about location. There are deer on Ft Hood that are close to 200 inches a 189 6/8 already killed this year. 30 minutes away a 140 is about as good as it gets on LF.

I agree. A pretty well known biologist told me that AR's were instituted solely to increase the number of mature bucks in certain areas. It had nothing to do with growing bigger racks.

That depends on where you hunted. I was on leases with my dad in the 60s and 70s where we saw 100 deer a day.
In the 80s here in Albany we saw 40 a day.
Big deer were shot out but there were still a lot of deer.