Just curious, after another year of antler restrcitions:

Has anyone went from not liking them to liking them or liking them to not liking them or is your opinion of them still the same whether you have always liked them or not?

WTF????

i dont have ars. so its all good to me! curly are u drinkin again?!

You must be gettin' bored with the Black Panther thread andwith Cameron

Now there's a smart man!

or maybe

Just switched leases this year so I couldn't tell you if they affected the deer one way or the other

AR's were great in my area......

Kept me from shooting this deer....




tgt

Looks like a cull to me but if it weren't for the restrictions, you would have a choice to shoot it or not? Would you have wanted to shoot it?

my opinion remains the same.

I have been hunting AR counties for over 5 years and yet to see a legal one. With that said I do not like them and even if next year the woods were full of monsters which I doubt I would not like them. When I hunt I should be given limits on only how many not by size.

probably

he not only a cull but he looks mature to me but I am no biologist

i still like em. and im hunting in one of the orig counties and several that were added the second year.

In all 4 counties, i like the results we are seeing. Def better deer in Lavaca and Victoria counties at our places there.


I didnt like them for the first few years, but ive seen the change, and i wont lie.... i like shooting larger deer lol.

Which is....

there was no problem needing to be fixed. Can't preach ratio balance and dish out a freebie yearling buck tag.

Tell me yours and I'll tell ya mine!!!

Now it is getting good..

Mine's the same. Hate 'em. Wasn't hurting enough to need them. Nobody in our area was griping because we didn't have enough mature bucks running around. So now they make us size up antler width before shooting to make more mature bucks, yet they allow us to shoot an extra buck, which could legally be a young spike and providing you're not on LAMPS, let you shoot more doe. Hahaha, I'm sure eveyone knew my stance hasn't changed but hey, you asked!

I liked the idea when they were first introduced and now like them even more. I just like to see mature bucks on a consistent basis and thanks to AR's I do. I did not pull the trigger at all this year but saw plenty that were legal. If I want meat I will take a doe.

Let me see Curly!!! I did not like them before and hate them now!!!

I was somewhat excited when they were first announced 3 or so years ago. We've always had wide bucks, but not too many mature bucks.

This year I saw very few legal bucks and the only mature bucks I saw were barely legal. However, I do know of at least three different 2.5 year old bucks that were shot by neighbors that were technically legal, but not near mature.

I'll give them another year or so before condemning them completely, but I don't like the trend as it relates to me.

I will admit that some other changes have occurred over the last couple of years that have made a negative impact. The main one being that I've gained one set of really bad neighbors and another set that I haven't really figured out yet, but question.

The other place I hunt is on year 5 or 6 and I've seen no effect whatsoever. However, that place is 12,000 acres with very little pressure right next to 18,000 acres with no pressure at all, so the herd is basically just natural as there are no management practices whatsoever.

Curly you know how i feel about em! After 5yrs and see fewer and fewer deer every year TPW can stick em! [you know where]

I wish everyone would list counties where you like them or dislike them.

I like them in Archer; hate them in Red River/Fannin/Lamar/Delta

You fellows may be surprised to learn that I like them in Burleson. And we saw more large-antlered, mature bucks this year than any year in my neighbor's 34-year recollection. Year 4 of ARs.

It should also be noted that my county doesn't allow the harvest of does apart from archery season, so that probably helps keep the population up.

Stephens Co.
It's our 2nd year and both years have been REALLY bad so I can't really judge... but I didn't like them last year and still don't.

IMO they could just offer advice on how to grow bigger better deer then leave it up to us.

Tyler County!!! Disliked them before and hate them now!!!

Upshur county. I like them. We are seeing much nicer deer than in any years prior to AR's. The hunting club im on has been on the same property since the 80s so I would say thats a decent testimonial for our area. It would be much better if we could get everyone to follow the rules/law.

Nac/SA/Angelina...no likey.

Leon county...they are ok but I dont think they amount to much for our ranch. We have been strictly managing our place going on 8yrs and we still have the same size deer. I just enjoy sitting by a campfire and drinking beer....and shooting does!

Wood Co.and everyone knows.

Edwards County......don't have them but I don't like them.

When I read this I thought of Sir Mix-a-lot.

I like big bucks and i cannot lie.
You other hunter can't deny.
When a buck walk by with a lot of points and that wide thing in your face, you get sprung.

hey curly just a quick question not trying to start anything but if you dont like them why dont you just get on a different lease in a different county?

Shoot um all...

Henderson county and they suck!

cheap lease, can't afford most other places, been on it for 30 years, mostly family and some close friends.

Dang it Catchin!!! Now I'm youtubing Sir Mix-a-lot.

we just about could now with the added spike tag and increased doe bag limits.....providing we could see any.

Erath Co.
Luv em!

thats an awesome reason lots of good times spent on it then. 30 years is amazing!!!

Hopkins co and they suck!

Franklin Co. and i like em more and more every year

Tyler Co.

Based on the narrow racks I've seen (in flesh and Gcams)on mature deer, ARs suck for our area, and no we're not seeing more or better deer, and oh by the way ARs Suck BIG TIME In our area.

I liked them before and still like them now, even though I did have to pass an ancient buck this year because he didn't make the minimum. For all the good they've done I'll happily let a few slip through the cracks.

That said I have kind of changed my mind about the extra spike thing. It sounds like a lot of places would be better off it they removed that option altogether.

Curly you're cool in my book any day though

This is BrandonA we are talking about here...a goat could walk by and all that would still hold true.

When they first applied to my county, 4 years ago, I was somewhat upset, and a bit concerned about wether or not the older relatives that hunt my place would take them seriously!!! Well, they did take them seriously, and now I like them. It's hard to manage 500 low-fenced acres for mature bucks, and LOTS of people around me were of the "if it has horns shoot it" mind-set, even though we had PLENTY of bucks, just no mature bucks. After 4 years under AR's we took the two largest, most mature bucks ever off my place this past season. Neither of them was mine, of course, but I was still happy to see bucks older than 2-1/2 years hanging in our tree, which was the previous normal age for a buck taken.

As a side-note, the first year we had them, I built a "Go/No-Go" board to hang in camp. I dug through a pile of antlers in my garage and found a spike, a 3-point, a 15" 8-point", and an 11" 6-point. I fastened them to a board, with the measurement laid out inside the spread, and a desrciption underneath the antlers as to why or why not each buck was legal, just like the picture in the Outdoor Annual. Our game warden checked us opening weekend and loved it. He thought it was the best thing he ever saw and wished every camp had one.

we like them in Coryell County

I hunt in Young county and HATE the AR's.

after getting a property from some "if it's legal it's eaten" folks (nothing wrong with that if that's their goal), lets see what having ARs for 5 seasons has done on a property....

Looks like its working wonders for ya rifleman! Thats twice the bucks i have seen all season but racks are the same. lol. Can we say thanks TPW?

I never saw any of those bucks, just found out how the place was hunted and ran trail cam surveys. Not looking good except on the pork side of things.

You were to busy shooting hogs to see any bucks on that place anyway! Them bucks heard that war and thought they were under the old management plan!

I like eating Deer i canot lie- Dang ARs i wonder why- Looking for horns not I ,not I.

they are going to think war, but we've just been toying with them so far...I haven't set up 20yds from the feeder loaded down with buckshot yet, but that will change next time we go in. There's about 80acres we didn't mess with that might have a little better showing, just have to find a way to do something with it w/o an access road being obvious from the highway.

I like the ar

Why? Young county is not known for basket racks?

I can also post 9 pictures of young deer off my ranch that don't make 13"s. At the same time I can also post 9 pictures of mature deer that do.

If you are against AR's because of the increased harvest numbers - I get it
If you are against AR's because you can't cull - I kind of get it (only seen one in 5 years on my ranch)
If are against any regulation (I think this is the majority) - I don't get it

Use to hear it ALL the time "I am a meat hunter, horns don't matter to me." Yet, what was the first thing put down (while passing on the other 15 does) the only young buck in the group.

that is every buck I have pics of on that place, I'm not picking out young ones, spread has nothing to do with it. Photos are a respresentation of age structure.

Letsgo, I don't understand why you think that everybody who are against AR's are just going to go out and shot the 1st buck they see!!! Obviously, you are in a County that doesn't have the "narrow" rack genetics that some of us in East Texas have to contend with!!! In Tyler County I see several bucks in a year and believe that if they just cut the limit to 1 buck, a lot more of the young bucks would survive and the age structure of the herd, (reason for AR's in the first place), would improve!!!

Parker County and I don't like AR's at all.

I had 2 legal, mature bucks on camera last season and an assortment of narrow funky looking young and some semi mature bucks that don't look like they will ever reach 13" inside.

This season 1 legal 2.5 y/o and same narrow funky looking guys from last year eating corn and spreading their inferior genes.

Now given the choice would you rather shoot the young legal buck or one of the narrow older bucks?

As of last year I am no longer allowed to make that decision.

"find a new lease" some say. Its family land. My family owns the land and the state owns the game so we just have to deal with it.

Not the group of hunters I know there. They still have yet to see a legal buck in 5 years. I have hunted (as an invited guest) there and nothing but small narrow racks. Now tell me how long has this county been under AR's? Seems like the same narrow bucks breeding and spreading thier genetics.

What happened to making my own decisions about what I want to shoot and have my son, daughter or grandchildren shoot. My land, my feed, my time invested so why do I need someone else telling me what I can and can't shoot.
I am all about taking care of my land and our resources but I sure as heck don/t need the TWPD telling me how to do it.
Guess that expresses my opinion pretty clearly

Amazing! Looks like my gcam pics from Tyler Co.

Cooke county and they don't bother me really most of the deer I seen that were mature deer had a good spread but still have the young ones that need to grow

This was our first year of the AR's so I shouldn't have a opinion yet but as a rancher I am in the country every day and I like seeing all the mature bucks that are still around after season this year if the AR's had any thing to do with it. On the downside I also see alot of cull bucks I wish someone would have harvested but couldn't because of the AR's.

yeah, this is why I mentioned on the "What would you change?" thread that I wish they'd let kids take culls during youth seasons. Just add a "youth tag" to any licensee under 16yo, good for any deer during any youth season. We've spent the past 18 years on my place taking out little basket-racked bastages, now I'm afraid they might get a whole new foothold and take over again just out of sheer numerical superiority. I'd love to be able to have a few kids out every year to keep them in check. I bet such a change would open up a LOT of youth hunting opportunity!

I was fully expecting to see quite a few 3.5yr olds, but that wasn't the case.

Before ar we could only shoot bucks in gun season! only does that could be shot was archery only.

Limestone, 2nd year no legal bucks seen, would like to see the spike tag go away.....

Red River Co.... only legal buck seen this year, I saw him everytime I went hunting this year,(5 weekends) A spike, passed on him every time but the last day I hunted, I shot him because i like venison and didnt wanna go a year without....... I hate AR's, saw 7 basket rack 8's and one 9...older deer... never will be shooters...........yeah.... that helps the "wide rack" gene pool

It's all about the health of the herd.

Ya'll just don't understand. When there are no more deer, we can claim the healthiest herd in the country.

Oh, wait, we had that before didn't we?

I have two places to hunt, one in Hamilton Co. and the 2nd in Jack Co. Hamilton Co has been in AR for 5th yr and has went from seeing lots of does and yearling to 2 yr olds to lots of yearling and 2 years olds and seeing 3 and 4 yr olds with the occational 5 and 6 year olds. Which is the kind of deer we look for. Instead of shooting those little guys and saying the neighbor would, you have to not shot by law. If th place has good cover, good food ( not a feeder that is ran from 2 weeks before season until every body decides there through hunting for the year ) the hunting will get WAY BETTER. The Jack Co place went into AR yast year and I am happy due to those yearling we pass on will be protected

Not a mature buck in any of those pics. Most of our yearlings and 2.5 year olds don't meet the ar requirements either. Thats the point! Its seems to me you guys that never had any gripes about mature bucks before were probably the ones shooting all the yearlings and 2.5 year old before the ars.
Oh ya, I hunt in Walker county and i love the AR's but not the spike tag. Here is what a mature buck that barely made it looks like. Didnt care if it made it or not because we are Mld but thought i would share. This buck had 13 1/4" spread, was 6.5 years old and scored 135. It was shot by one of our members this year.

After reading all post I dare ANYONE to post trail cam pic of a 5 yr that is not legal. And dough that anyone can post a 4 yr old.

That deer dont look legal to me. If ya spread his ears like tpw goes by i bet his ears are wider. definitly mature tho and thats the reason i hate AR. Just think how many narrow rack genes he spread around after 6yrs! And i have seen many pics on this forum of mature deer that will NEVER make 13in.

that's the point...after 5 yrs, where are they?

on other places we've had control over for a while, a lot of the 2.5yr olds would be TPW shooters.

2- 4yr olds

Lol the deer hanging is legal and the other pic is a fake and not even a good one

Still waiting on that old deer that is not legal

Great deer. But he was a great deer at 12 and 3/4 too.

So if we were shooting them all..... and haven't since ARs started 5 years ago, where are all the monsters now? For that matter, where are the deer at all?

We have been managing over 2000 acres for 15 years for mature bucks. We have 1 buck for every .7 does and we still rarely see mature bucks. They get smarter when they get older. We still manage to kill a few every year. It takes longer than a few years. It takes multiple generations.

It takes exactly 3 years for a deer to get 3 years older.

It was 13 1/4 qaurter inch i personally measured this deer. It doesnt matter anyway because we are mld 3. What i should have mentioned is this was the only narrow racked mature deer that was close the limit that we have killed in 15 years. Its a numbers game. Out of all the bucks we have killed over the years this was the only one.

it takes generations to change herd dynamics.

But only a few years for them to disappear...

Waht county are you hunting in ?

he was legal so we are still waiting for for a pic of a mature deer under 13 inches wide last time I look 13 1/4 is over 13

I don't have a pic of obama either but he is real. So we are all liars? Since I don't have deer pics and I didn't see one in person, is the camera broke? No, it had a ton of squirrels, a few pigs, just not many deer and ZERO legal deer.

And his was MLD, the rules don't apply so he could have been 11 1/4 and been legal.

What county do you hunt in?

Everbody needs to talk to the gamewarden in there area. The intent of the law is to protect it for the first 2 yr of its age. If it is 4 or 5 and 12 3/4 the gamewarden is never even going to measure it ( INTENT OF LAW )They have that as a option

Can you guarantee that? I can't take that risk. I wish they'd jsut reduce the bag limit to the "one deer only" that got us tons of numbers in the past. But since AR's and bag limit increases came about, numbers have plummeted.

You need to go to the TPWD web sight. There figures disagree with what your saying. I lean toward there numbers and in the AR co the average age of bucks havested goes from 1 1/2 to 3 1/2 , How is that a bad thing?

deer hanging is a 12.5" 12pt...4,5yr old.

You are new here, right?

We have beat this horse from dead to alive to dead about 30 times a year. They are cherry picking their data, and they admit it. They know they have data collection problems, too many to renumerate here. Use the search function, go back and read the statistics threads.

Lean where you want to. I have worked with their data set too, and with them on several issues. We have seen their raw data (finally) and it won't support their pretty charts and graphs.

I don't speak from anectdotal once in a while perspectives. Statistical analysis is important to me.

right about that...we still see the same overall genetics from deer shot back in the early 1900s around my parents place.

Well there you go!

that just ticked me off, b/c of the lack of info, it told me they trashed a lot of data they received if it wasn't in a user friendly format.

how wide does this one look?

9"

3.5 <13" +8pt = dirt nap...

Good thing this was pre-antler restrictions:

Hoyt - the ear method suggested by TPWD is when they are erect and not spread.

game cam deer is legal, the one that was older spike would not be in the herd if shot year to two before when it was a spike and for all those saying killing a spike is bad wow it is ok to kill a 1 1/2yr 8 point but bad to kill a spike. It appears to me all the AR hates are all about the fact that they cant kill the young bucks

game cam deer is legal, the one that was older spike would not be in the herd if shot year to two before when it was a spike and for all those saying killing a spike is bad wow it is ok to kill a 1 1/2yr 8 point but bad to kill a spike. It appears to me all the AR hates are all about the fact that they cant kill the young bucks

Another side note. MLD properties dont have to follow the AR rules so enrole your land into it and a Biologist will develop the best harvest plan for your land.

game cam deer would have gotten you fined. 12 1/4", If you look close that "spike" actually has 3pts on each side making him a 6pt...a 186lb 6pt, but still a 6pt. I follow mgmt plans of properties, they say shoot, I shoot... whether I want to or not. MGMT plan I go by on family land and our own places are 5.5 minimum, no ifs, ands or buts....so that argument about AR haters doesn't hold true.

Property those latest deer were on have been on MLD for the longest. You will not find many (if any) leases in AR counties that have been strictly age-based managed as long as they have. I want no part of MLD until we get a better deer population...if we killed their suggested doe quotas we'de be back @ square 1 and still waiting on a huntable buck population.

just sayin'....

Yep, that's where southern red river county is right now, square one, almost ready for some transplants...

Like I said the one deer should have been shot before it got that old and it would have been a spike> The whole purpose of the AR is to protect the young bucks tell they are 3 1/2 so 5 1/2 is no problem> I to have hunted MLD and it boils down to herd health and hunter knowlege to better the herd by removing animals that are undesirable. Of course if it is a 100 acre place with 4 or 5 hunters then there is nothing that is going to help that, you can blame the AR for the lack of hunting or good hunting the place produces

So, just get a better lease? Or shoot a doe? Or get better neighbors?

We went from seeing 20 deer a day to none.


BTW, we haven't shot a buck off the place since AR's started....

Gotta love it

What happened with your neighbors to effect your hunting? How big is your place and how many guns total ? What are the ajoining places like gun per acer. This is the ratio that has the biggest single effect on what the deer hunting is like

Turkeyfantic till you hunt in the countys that are having the problems and the numbers are dropping every year you dont know squat. Every county is different. Some places it works and some it dont. Like vernon said we had plenty of deer in hopkins co. and now after 5yrs of AR and liberal bag limits we are lucky to see a deer while hunting. And didnt see a legal deer this year at all, not even a spike!

400 acres, virtually no neighbors, and the same neighbors since the 80's..... it's not something we just woke up and decided to hate AR's one morning... We have hunting the same area since the late 80's, seeing more deer every year until?????????

AR's (and their accompanying bag limit increases, and yes, they are together, came together, listed together, even the great TPWD website list them in the same paragraph)

No way to know what that deer was, the way the one side grew made me think he had some kind of injury. I'm blaming ARs for having flaws out the WA-ZOO

Hehe

I think the real reason you guys havent been seeing the numbers is because of that spike tag and those 2 doe tags. Im not saying its yall but the counties you guys have mentioned are known to be problem counties with iresponsible hunting and the whole brown its down mentality. After talking to sig, curly, seadog, and hoytman on this forum i know you gtuys arent the problem and i agree with you guys that there are flaws in the system. The spike tag is a huge problem. I have hunted tyler county and have seen first hand that most of your yearling (1.5) bucks are going to be spikes. You can decimate a population shooting every spike you see for five years in those areas. To add to it tpwd gives 2 doe tags. Thats is rediculous when compare herd density to hunter density in east texas. It just doesnt work that way. I know why tpwd gave all the tags. To pasify people so they could put the 13' inch rule in place. It needs to be changed but the 13' inch rule needs to stay. I honestly think if the spike tag was removed you guys would be seeing legal deer again.

Spike tag and at least one doe tag!

I still like Sig's idea....1 deer. That's it, then you're done. Buck or doe regardless of it's age.

me too; makes it easier to get kids and new hunters involved and successful; then teach management ideas beyond that.

Plus less deer are being killed!

I still have yet to see anyone explain why they are seeing less mature bucks than they were before. everyone acts like their deer leases had plenty of mature bucks, but now with AR's in place, the mature deer are few and far between.

so please..... someone please explain how a system that is more restrictive on shooting bucks, results in fewer mature bucks?

say everyone shoots a spike now... we can debate spikes all day long, as 99% of them are yearling bucks. Are 75% of bucks born in east texas as spikes?

I see lots of photos of clearly immature bucks that aren't legal.... hence, they shouldn't be shot.

so what is the cause?

I can understand seeing fewer der overall with the increase of the doe tags. But does aren't bucks. Does don't grow antlers (usually)..... so why are there fewer mature bucks?

everyone is quick to blame AR's for lack of mature legal deer, but there is no logical reason why it could result in fewer mature deer.

Spikes become bucks, and yes should be protected until they are at least 2.5.

Does produce bucks, about fifty percent of the time..... if you kill too many of them this year, you are reducing next years buck population for fawns by 50% (roughly)....

Do that long enough (like 5 years) and it decreases the number of mature bucks available....

Those 3.5 year old 12.5inch deer from 5 years ago never reached 13 inches and have died of old age and other natural predations....

Eastern Lampasas Co. 500 acres. Five years of AR. Deer numbers continue to increase. Hunting pressure continues to increase on neighboring ranches. Seeing more bucks, including spikes, odd and narrow racks, and 2.5y/o 12" 8 pointers. Only a couple mature bucks spotted (none by me and I was out there every weekend). No mature deer were taken by any of us, though a couple that squeaked by 13" were.

2008 and 2009 were Exceptional drought years and 2010 wasn't much better.

Results inconclusive.

PS The local Game Warden told us last year he was getting writers cramp from writing tickets for undersized bucks at the local processors. I'm guessing ARs aren't very popular around there either.

He must be lying!


Just read above, no game warden really writes tickets for that! It's not the intent of the law!

Forget why "we" should explain why "we" think ARs have something to do with the decline of our deer populations (in certain areas) I just wish someone would explain to us why they thought we HAD to have antler restrictions in the first place and what good the added spike tag and extra doe bag limit does to help the health of our deer herds. I mean isn't that the supposed overall goal, to improve the health of deer herds?

DEAD ain't good for anythings health!

So Sig, is it a correct statement to say that the only deer they really care to protect are the young bucks with "potential"?

that's why you don't leave the head at the processor!

Before AR the average age of a buck shot in east tx co was a 1 1/2. How are shoting 1 1/2 yr spike going to decimate the buck numbers in those countys. I believe increase poaching and year round hunting for food are a way bigger problem in east tx. I would say that removing one of the doe tags from the limit in east tx may be a good idea but at the end of the day it all boils down to yall hunter in east tx. No body forces you are your fellow hunts to kill a doe or the spike

Because when everyone is forced to hold out for a mature buck, that's all that gets killed... at least at first. Then you're left with nothing but younger and/or inferior bucks and due to frustration, inexperience and greater hunter numbers, they soon take a big hit too... assuming the GW wasn't lying to me about all the tickets he's writing for undersized bucks. That's one theory anyway.

As far as any increased poaching goes, I would think East Texans have less of a need for poaching now with the extra spike tag and increased doe bag limits.

HORN

He's writing them as the idiots pull in with their deer.

Please don't make me read through all the other posts! lol No problem, I can can imagine who said it.

The ones most likely to shoot small deer, are the ones most likely to take them to a processor.

Vernon Richardson, January 17, 2011

According to all the east tx AR guys they all dont see spike or kill does and no mature bucks. And all the while the deer population is being decimated bye this lack of harvesting. I need one of you guys to explain this one. Not adding up

Exactly!

Ill try to explain how it helps the health of a deer herd:

Shooting more does brings your buck to doe ratio closer to 1 to 1. When you have an even ratio you have a shorter more pronounced rut which means that most of your does are getting bred roughly around the same time. This allows for better fawn recruitment due to the strength in numbers philosophy. (If there are more deer being bred at the same time there will be more fawns being born at the same time giving them a better chance of survival.) The spike tag is intended to remove a few more mouths to feed thereby giving your other "better" bucks more nutrition. The 13" inch rule is intended to stop hunters from harvesting bucks that are not mature (duh i know) again giveng you a more balanced herd.

I put the "better" in qoutations because i dont believe in shooting yearling spikes.

Having said that I dont believe this management plan will not work in all areas it needs to be propert specific. Some properties can sustain more deer than others so you have to know how many bucks and does you can kill. Thats why i recomend all you guys who do not like ars to get on the mld program and start your own property specific management plan. To me it sounds like you guys have nothing to loose if your leases are as bad a s you say they are.

Oh it adds up. Before AR's when it was ONE BUCK ONLY, bubba MIGHT, might pass on a spike looking for a big buck. NOW, every spike that shows up in front of bubba gets hammered (or at least the first one does).... plus 2 does, plus if any of them do make 12.5 they get shot too.

There's no chance of a spike walking past bubba.


Me, Curly, Hoyt, etc haven't been shooting them, but someone has!!!

For every doe that gets shot, you killed half a buck next year, half the next year, half the next year...

When someone shoots a 2.5 year old doe...... if she would have lived to 6.5, they also killed 2 bucks and 2 does over the next four years.

As far as the not seeing mature buck goes. Man thats just east texas. I am on an intensly managed property and we dont see that many mature bucks. They are smart and the woods are thick.

http://www.i-maps.com/Qdma/frame/default...00&MF=11000

the most common problem I see is using estimations on population density. If you want to practice QDMA, which is what TPW has done by restricting harvest on bucks while increasing doe harvest (to attempt to mess with an estimated ratio....which is canceled out by the yearling tag), you had better be dang sure of what that density is or you will shoot a place out. Coupled with what jbs touched on by hunter density... you can basically wipe out one of those deer pockets (common for ETx), despite one person sitting on their tags. We see spikes, we see does, we have the ability to limit what gets shot on a section of land, we hold the best bedding area around and that helps concentrate deer...we have mature deer. Other folks aren't as lucky and my guess would be they are holding a thin pocket or are on the outskirts of a pocket's range.

One of the best posts ever. I may have to quote you in my paper.


Our pocket or herd has grown steadily since the 80's only to be wiped out in a few years with AR's.


The state knows it too. They'll admit it behind the scenes off the record etc. Their data is too global to be used at a local level, not to mention it's reliability is poor at best. I think they are good people and I think they will fix it IF they ever get the money and there are hunters and deer left when they do!

THis much I know for a fact. I grew up and did a lot of hunting in WHarton County. For years we could kill 2 bucks but could not get any doe tags, even tho the ranch across the Colorado river got tags by the hundreds.

I killed a lot of young 3-4-5 points, especially bowhunting. I killed maybe 4 that were big enough at the time to draw attention . Not a one would be legal today. Under the AR regs, I would have hunted there ( and been the only one most of the time ) for over 15 years and would never have been able to shoot a deer. Well the last couple of years we were finally able to get doe tags and I guess that would mean hypothetically I could have.

I know that TP&W felt they had to do something. But change it up some. A couple years of 13"s then maybe a year or 2 of 8 points or better . At least that way, some of those hat racks could be removed.

And also, in my opinion, the spike or unbranched antler deal is just throwing the hunters a bone because they know the over 133 are far and few between

Thank you...I'm full of ideas, or something else on most days

don't shoot does. now there is an eye opening opinion for deer management.

a certain amount of land will only hold so many deer.

do you want does, or do you want bucks?

LOve the food argument for southern red river county. How many years have you hunted there?

red river county, red river county, red river county, red river county....


how many counties are under AR's?

What county do you hunt?

I used to hunt anderson, madison, and houston.

How long ago was that and what county do you hunt now?

I don't care. It's the one that is losing deer!

That's the point, it may be fantastic somewhere else. I have never debated wether it works in Angelina or ??? (BTW same data set used in Agelina and Fannin/Red River Counties!) I would never think to tell someone there (where I don't hunt or have any knowledge) they are wrong.

That would be, well, wrong.

We are kinda liking it in Archer.

I'd love to have the second buck/spike tag in Foard or Hardeman where we see 10-12 bucks a sitting...


But because it may work in Archer, and might help some in Foard, has NOTHING at all to do with what is happening in Red River!!!

Get a map. Texas is a large, diverse state. Assuming there's one cure for a population of wild animals over that large an area is, well, wrong.

LONG long long ways from Anderson madison and houston to Red River, Hopkins or Fannin.

nothing wrong with Houston Co... been seeing nice deer in that county as far back as I can remember.

So Houston County wasn't an emerging county? It had an established prolific deer herd?

It's had one dang good pocket from what I've seen. Google up TBGA and see where a whole lot of your entries come from in that county.

WELL UNDER 13" and was 6.5 years old.....



Thats great advise BUT if you roll up on a game warden (having previously talked to him or not) with an illegal deer you are most likely going to get a ticket. PERIOD!

I got a ticket the other day for 85 in a 65!!!! The trooper did not HAVE to give me a ticket and he had the OPTION!! to not give me a ticket but guess what I GOT A TICKET!!!

I will find the game cam pics of this guy soon.

Parts of Angelina are losing deer, but it's b/c of ramped up doe harvest on MLD spilling over onto other properties. Then those other properties becoming MLD and suggested they also ramp up doe harvest w/ just a 3.5yr old minimum on bucks according to their management plan. Things were going great when there were only 75-100 does being killed, but when they hit the 280s mark and sustained that for a few years, things went to pot. Now the big deer in that long stetch of road are coming closer to town on a stretch of nonMLD clubs that allows members and their families to kill 1 buck and 2 does. Those older prestigious MLD leases just don't have the ability to produce the quantities of bucks it takes for their mgmt plans.

X2 a close friend of mines son shot a beautiful 4.5 yr 10 point that measured 12 5/8. Ticket was $300 plus restoration fee up to $2,500 (they haven't heard yet) What a horror story. These folks are good people that totally manage the land they own. Makes me sick.

That SUX seeing it was a mature deer!

funny how that deer wouldn't have brought the state squat a few yrs ago.

..and another thing, you don't get to keep the head and it's up to the GW if you get to keep the meat.
That's kinda like what you get when you kill one of the King's deer except they don't execute you!

Vernon i dont know about you but i dont know where these guys went to school but they need to fire the math teachers and kick the parents butts! One more time for you pro ar is great for everybody guys, Used to legally kill 1 buck and no does unless bowhunting =1 buck maybe i doe. Along comes ar rules and bag limits, you guys still with me? Now you can legally kill 2 bucks and 2 does all during firearms season which = 4 deer total [am i still going to fast?] 1 buck before, now 4 deer! get it! Oh crap go ask your math teachers again maybe they can explain it better and with less sarcasm.

All I have to say is WOW people out there still on don't shot momma deer mangment, In a healthy herd you should harvast about 25% of the buck herd and 25% of the doe herd. If this is followed and the spikes are figured into the 25% buck havest and a attemp is made to kill older does you end up with not only a health herd but able to move to a havest plan that takes out unwanted traits. Now it your on a place that has a hunter per 50 acers and your neighbors are the same( NO WORKY )

fuzzy math?

there are about 14,000 people here saying they didn't shoot a legal buck this year, but everytime the statistics come out..... EVERY hunter in an AR county shot 4 deer...

I cant stand AR's. There has to be a better way to manage the herd. I know that we had far more deer in the 80's when they opened up the does and even had a 2 buck limit in Cass for a while. I have killed s couple of great deer in Red River on some land in my family around Rosalie. It is a mixture of hardwood and wheat and milo. Deer there get some width, but I have a deer on my homeplace that hangs out behind the house. Josh and I have watched him for 3 years now.He would score 140, but Im still not sure he is 13 inches wide. Damnest thing I have ever seen.

If that's not proof statistics can lie, I don't know what is! So anyway, how long ago did say you hunted those counties you mentioned earlier and what county do you hunt now?

I'll say this and leave it alone... I really wish you guys were seeing more deer. It sucks that you aren't. I just don't think the lack of deer has anything to do with the 13" rule.

I also wish there was a way that obviously mature deer could be shot, but what is it? people have a hard enough time with the 13" rule, and spread is one of the easier things to esitmate on a deer. what should it be? 25" of mass or more? 15" beams or longer? total tine length totalling over 30 inches?

a right rear hoof longer than 3.5432"?

who knows. My own theory.... it's the damn russians.

Kyle, i bet you and turkeyfantic went to the same school! LOL.

curly... 3-6 years ago. haven't been back since. every time I think about finding a lease closer to home, I read these threads and it changes my mind....

perhaps, there is no shortage of deer, and it's an east texas conspiracy to keep people out!

But what county do you hunt now and dang it....you busted us!

Think of it like this. We have doe days, they get hammered. We can kill one "small" buck, be it a spike or 3 point and one deer over 13 inches. These areas have a limit of 4 deer and then on top of it you can kill one 13 inch in Cass and one in Morris, if your land is like mine in 2 counties, then we get more pressure than was intended. If anything lets say you can kill one buck east of 35 and one west of 35.

Kyle all we are sayin is it wasnt broke before AR and we want it back the way it was! Had more deer before ar and way less now! It aint WORKING here. Im done for the night my head is about to explode and i dont want to give the pro ar guys the satisfaction.

Thats fine with me. I remember well the influx of people back in the mid 80's. Sounded like a dang war opening day in my neighborhood.

Math score = 100%!

If enough people gather and voice what they want the state wiil listen ( Grayson Co bow or crossbow only ) The AR is a good thing but the 4 deer for those heavily hunted countys are not good things. Due too smaller average land holding in east tx it should have a modified version of the AR. If you put your voices togather you could have a bow/crossbow only

We dont want a bow or crossbow only! We want fewer tags available to everybody so fewer deer are killed.

They could say 13 plus or 4.5 and older. This would elimanate the deer needing to be havested but not wide enough. Nothing is set in stone get enough people to say what they want and they will listen

That would be great! Hey Mr. Deer, how old are you?

Age is not going to work. We may all say we know how to age, but we dont. I have a brother that works for TPWD and he ages deer for a study in the Panhandle. He said he figures hunters are about 50% on judging age. That is not a perfect science, until you get that jawbone harvested.

That would work great are we going to age deer by looking at the length of there ears?????? (like how to measure the 13" from a distance. I think I can tell a 4.5 from a 3.5 yr old deer but im not getting a ticket over that either!!!!!



Grayson bow only that will get some riled up and cause a new 18 page thread ! WE all KNOW there are NO deer in Grayson county so it HAS to be BOW only!!!!!!!!!!!


Oh by the way I go no response from you on the mature (6.5 yr old deer AGED by Jawbone) that was posted above.. Were people really implying that no deer could be over 4.5 years old and under 13"?????

TGT

Grayson county has one pocket of large deer imported.

It would not support four deer per hunter either.

Why do you turkey, or the other AR-proponents feel the overwhelming need to impose your values and opinions in places you have never been or hunted? We're not saying AR's are bad for Angelina, or Houston or Madison, or Archer...

Just that they suck in Red River, Fannin, Hopkins.

I manage or have access to 20k acres in Fannin and Grayson County. I am on and around it daily. When we see a deer, it's noteworthy. It will come up at lunch or supper discussion that day. And I could legally kill four, 2 bucks no less.

In Foard County, its nothing to see 10-20 or 30 deer, often 10 bucks and 4 does(2.5 to 1).... but you can only kill one buck...


We're not trying to say you guys are crazy, why do you feel the need to tell us how stupid redneck backwoods inbred hillbillies we are?

Heck, we already know.

Your right it was mature and looked to be under 13. The fact is at 4.5 a buck is pretty easy to tell he is mature. I can under stand the doe thing because I have seen a biologist " F " a ranch up over harvesting does. What is needed is large scale talks with the state to change the AR to balance the hunting pressure with the herd size in east tx. And as far as Grayson co it has lot of deer. It was the case when they first set it up but all in the county like the protection the bucks get. It produces some of the largest deer in the state and nation every year

I hunt Tyler County mostly and some in Sabine and I really don't like AR's. Like other's have said things were pretty good prior to AR's. Now, I see many bucks that don't meet the AR's but are mature, looking at body shape and size and some of those I see antler wise I would hate to see breeding, but we can't shoot them. IMO AR's seem to be more about trying to increase antler size than the herd, using the guize that anlter size increases with age(but I am not saying thats not true)as a broad statement. Seems I see more people rating their deer more on BC scores than in age,weight and points. And talking more about increasing anlter scores than herd size, health and weight. I hunt for the venison and the fun and friendship at the lease and the AR's are taking away the venison, but we still have fun and friendship, but taking fewer deer and the rising cost of things almost makes some people second think about going hunting. When I personally hear state biologist say that they know that AR's will not reasonably work in the areas I hunt because of herd genetics and we will see little increase in antler width I can't understand why we have the AR's. There are too many variables in herd management to say AR's are the cure all. I'd rather see the herd increase in health,size and average body weight than in an antler score. I'd much rather harvest a 3yo 12" 8pt buck weighing 150+lbs than a 5 yo 14" 10pt buck weighing 120lbs; you can't eat horns!

South and Eastern Grayson County has very few deer. I lived in Whitewright and grew up working on farms all around there. I bet there's not 200 deer from WW to Howe to the southern county line. I speak daily with farmers from that area and they are just now beginning to ever see deer.

There is one big pocket of imported deer around Haggerman. Yes they produce some great deer, but they are all coming from about 25 square miles of a 1600 square mile county (ok, numbers from my head, don't google it)

Well I will say that when Jack Co went AR for this year I was happy because I get tired of watching 2.5 yr old buck jump the fence onto the neighbors place that has two many hunters on it for its size and hearing a gun go off. I have a small place in Hamilton Co that has been AR for 5 years and WOW cant compare. See 4 or 5 does every hunt and 3 or 4 bucks every hunt with 2 or 3 mature bucks making a few showing through the season

It sounds like deer hunting needs to be stopped all together for about 3 years in these counties to let the herd build back up. Then only issue tags (doe or buck) based on the number of acres -maybe 1 tag per 200 acres.

We got alot of them in the there and we are on the houston walker/ county line

I ment to qoute the tbga comment.

I honestly think the best thing the Parks and Wildlife could do is to make it illegal for 2 years to kill anything with horns, unless your land is under the MLD program. That way we get 2 more years on every buck out there and all these so-called "meat hunters" can put their bullets where their mouths are and shoot the does that eat just as well as the 2.5 yo 8 point that only measures 12". This way we can get past all this crap about how the 13" rule screws up the harvest. Some of the pictures that have been posted during this topic has shown nothing but young deer that the 13" rule is designed to protect. Is it perfect? No, but it will allow some of these bucks to get closer to their full potential, before they get blasted. I have pictures of a 4.5 yo buck that is probably only 14", but he is close enough to the AR that the neighbors don't want to take a chance. This buck is 16 points and will score in the mid-140's. Next year with some protein and the right rains, this buck will still be fairly narrow, but will probably score in the 160's and only have a 15" spread. I would say the AR's are doing their job allowing this buck to reach his full potential. On the other hand I had pics of another 15 point with a 17" spread that was 4.5 yo. He too would have scored in the mid-140's. I think he might have gotten shot by the neighbors, because I haven't seen him in a good 4 weeks. This buck too could have been in the 160's next year, if the AR's protected deer 17" and under. Alas, not a perfect system, but better than letting the "meat hunters" shoot the 2.5 yo that hasn't even sniffed his full potential.

Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against TRUE meat hunters. But don't hide behind it and shoot the young bucks, so you can throw their 8 point racks on a wall inside your barn. If you truly want the meat, shoot a doe, there's plenty of them in Texas. I killed 3 this year and would have killed more if I had more tags. I also let 4 bucks walk that were over 13" wide and would have scored in the mid-120's to lower 150's. The reason... they don't eat as good as those does and I've already got a 170" 13 point hanging on the wall (this buck was only 16" wide). I want one bigger. In short, I like the AR's because they allow that buck that crossed in front of my neighbors that I watched all season get to next year, where he might have the potential to go over 170".

Most east texas counties with normal deer populations are going to be around 5 deer per 100 acres. You could safley take around 20 percent of your herd a year. So you should be able to kill one deer per hundred acres. Now take your acreage split the amount of deer equally into does and bucks and there what you should not go over. And not more than 1 trophy mature buck per 600 acres. Thats a good starting point for the average east texas area. Keep records of what yall are seeing and adjust your kill ratios accordingly over the years. Thats all tpwd does anyway.

On our lease we have to shoulder mount any buck we shoot thats not a cull. It makes you real selective

AR might stand for Antler Restrictions or Antler Revenue or Antler Ruler but not so much Age Restrictions because as long as we have the added spike tag, saying it's all to let bucks mature, well, kinda makes the ones who set ARs in place, look, well, less than smart and that is kinda scary. I'll say it again Sig, your idea of allowing only one deer per hunter per season, regardless of the age or gender of the deer, or whether it's rifle or bow season, just one deer, sounds like a good idea but alas, I'm sure somehow that's flawed and less than perfect like ARs.

Same thing on my ranch

I am not sure of deer density on east tx but a 5 per 100 that works out to touch over 30 per sq mile. Lets say it is a 1;2 buck ratio ( 1 buck for every 2 does ) you should havest 25% of the doe's which if 5 and 25% bucks which is 2.5 make that half a spike. What it really boiles down to is there should be about two hunters per 640 acres. So if you and three other of your buddies are hunting 200 acers expect to kill a buck about ever other year for the whole place

Great! another post on how we should all shoot does if we are meat hunters! What a load of crap. In alot of ar countys you have 4 days to kill a doe or 2 and thats it, also thats one of the reasons why we have fewer deer every year under ar rules and bag limits because you can kill too many deer period. 338ultra i dont know where you hunt but in the countys we hunt ar dont work! If its working for you well thats great. Also us [meat hunters] dont care about antler sizes and a young buck will eat alot better than any 5 or 6 year old deer.

How do you get everyone should shoot 25% of the does everywhere? There's no way you can make a general statement like that and have any sort of reliability to the numbers, none, notta. Many areas or pockets as used earlier can support many more deer per acre. Many areas can't support any. At your rate you would eventually never have a femaile over 3.5 years old. Great herd health there.

Unless you are WAY overpopulated killing 25% of your does, or a 100% over a 4 year period will devastate a herd. That kind of thinking is what got us here.


They took numbers from MLD properties and HIGHLY concentrated areas of habitat and used those numbers to set limits for entire regions and beyond. That's akin to taking a human density number in South Oak Cliff and sprading it over Texas. We'd be bigger than China on paper.






If t

Hoytman, got a question for you. How many acres are you hunting on and in what county? I've hunted in East Texas for years. It was the worst county in the state of Texas for outlaws running dogs. Many times I set in a deer blind and watched a deer come across a sendero and a few seconds later dogs would be behind her. Even with it being the most poached county in the state, we still had plenty of deer. I didn't see 40 everytime I went out, but I was able to see 5 - 10. Those poachers had the same machismo mentality that you do, that young "buck" is going to eat really good. That young doe, sitting there is going to eat just as well. And regardless of what you think, it is better to have as close to a 1:1 balanced herd as you can, and there is no county in East Texas that has that. So, question is, how many acres do you hunt? Have you got 10 people packed on 100 acres? Are you hunting by yourself on 1,000 acres or 20 acres. How many cameras do you have going to survey this property?

I'll tell you where I hunt. I hunt pretty much by myself on 1,500 acres that borders a 12,000 acre ranch (that doesn't allow hunting) and two other 3,000 acre ranches that don't allow hunting. The ranch to the south of me is the only place hunters are allowed and that is where I am seeing the poorest health heard and younger deer, because after talking with these guys, like you, they are meat hunters. And before you say, well not everyone can afford a place like that, I pay $0. The landowner knows I am management minded and wants me to improve his deer heard. I've had 5 food plots put in for him, he bought 7 feeders for me to put up around the ranch and 4 game cameras for me to get a census of what we had and 4 new deer stands. I didn't have to pay for any of it. I'm fortunate. But I'm sure a lot of landowners would not mind guys coming out and hunting, but the problem is if they meat hunt and shoot the first thing that comes around, they are dropping the value of the land and no landowner wants that. If they are selective about what they will take they can improve the deer heard and improve that value of the landowners property.

In a health herd the recruitment is around 1.5 fawn survial per doe that is why you need to take 25% but if you have 6 blocks at acers each and they all have 5 guns on it that makes 30 guns that expect to shoot a big buck and some doe,s. Don,t work ! 2.5 bucks out of 10 and 5 doe,s out of 20 is very healthy harvest but if a area has to many guhs then no regulation helps because 30 bucks and 30 doe,s is to high harvest

Sig,

I agree with you on the fact that taking 25% of the does might be too many, if you are wanting to GROW your deer heard. But if you are wanting to sustain it or selectively reduce it, it might not be that bad of a number.

If you have 100 does and you kill 25 of them, The natural fawn recruitment rate is about 56% average for HEALTHY DEER HEARDS in the state of Texas and that includes predation. But let's drop it down to 50% since East Texas or wherever you hunt is so crappy. If you that leaves you 75 does. If these does have 38 fawns, half of them being bucks half of them being does, then that next year you will have 94 does. Not bad numbers. IF you want to sustain your deer heard, cut it back to 20% of the does and still have 100 does the following year. If you want to grow it, cut your harvest back to 15% and have 106 does the next year. While not and exact science, because no one can control the precipitation those numbers will get you close and you can see that Turkey fanatic is probably not too far off.

You are not figuring in habitat, drought, predation, etc. How are you getting at a recruitement rate of 1.5 fawns per doe? Won't fly from what I can tell. You are basing this off a doe herd that is 100% adult breeding age doe that have all had twins. Show me a deer herd in the state that is healthy that is 100% old mature doe and no 1.5 yr olds. A healthy doe herd will have 40% or so of doe that are 1.5 yrs old that fall and they will not have a fawn on the ground. As an example using 100 doe for math. You have 40% or 40 doe at 1.5 and if the remaining doe herd of 60% or 60 hd has a 200% fawn crop you would only hvae 120 fawns at census time. That would look like a 120% fawn crop on paper for your census. That is what I consider a healthy doe herd. It does not happen very often like that. You can't preach herd management to someone when you have not seen the place in person nor have any history by checking their records. TPW would reccommend that you shoot 16% of your deer herd on the buck and doe and you will be ok and have plenty of numbers in a perfect world. These guys that are not seeing the same amount of deer post AR to pre AR have more than AR issues to contend with and telling them not to shoot deer or that they have shot to many is not the answer. It lies deeper than that. They are not in that perfect world right now.

It seems most everyone was content before ARs and for those out there who seem upset that we are fussing about ARs, honestly, weren't you content before them too?

The problem I see with all of this is that deer just can not read. They do not understand what they are supposed to do under AR's. If they could read then they would know that a percentage of them are going to die each year and they would reproduce exactly that same amount each year. First thing before you can grow a herd is that you have to have enough nutrition to do it. If you deer numbers are at carrying capacity then how are you going to increase numbers of one portion the density with shooting less if there is not enough forage to support them? They are at carrying capacity in any given year. If you going to increase population then you have to improve habitat or improve nutrition to grow the population over the long run. Again there are other issues in these AR areas that are effecting their deer numbers. I am guessing it is a combination of many factors including the AR.

I was happier before we went to an age based harvest system on our lease back in 2007. Granted we've seen alot more mature deer since but I haven't taken a buck either. One of these years its going to pay off though, I'm confident of that, so I just pay my money and bide my time.

In a ways I have to agree with you Curly. Everyone was happy before the AR's. But you would have to agree that deep down inside most every hunter in those areas hunted each season with the hopes of taking a bigger buck than ever. There in lies the problem. TPW and the state of Texas has long been a leader in deer management. In the American public eye the midwest was growing bigger deer than the leader and I think this is were TPW started the change of their management goals. With a statewide(not just a regional issue) population out of control they used this AR method to change that issue. If you were ok before them and now you are not then you fell under the blanket management plan IMO. Sad for you but great for others. How do you fix this? Time will tell but I can assure you they are getting an earful on it and are working on it now. That "fix" they come up with help some but still not all.

But there are also ranched out there that EAT everything they shoot. Not just pass 'em on the hunters for hungry, and mount the antlers....

Although I do not hunt much in an AR county, Waller and Austin Counties, I do like the AR's but the spike tag has got to go.

Until they get TWIMS up and running and get to managing on local levels even lower than counties, we are screwed. They know. Just started with this program and it's gotta run its course until they can fund something better.

I think we need mandatory deer check stations and reporting procedures. they need to put a pin on a map wher the deer comes.

338ultra i hunt my property and neighbors totaling around 300 acres and im the only one who hunts it now that my daughter stopped hunting and have 4 stands and 2 food plots about 2acres each and its north of sulphur springs in hopkins co. I have lived there 23yrs now and have hunted it every year since then. When we first moved on the property we had plenty of deer but could only hunt 1buck and no does ulesss hunting in archery season. Always saw lots of deer and you could kill 1 buck any size and your done! Now ya can kill 4 deer and there are more hunters so numbers are taking a nose dive. dont need a slide rule to figure it out. And on a personal note i dont need a big set of antlers to stroke my ego and i eat every deer i kill. Dont need you our anybodys ok on shooting a young deer to eat. Ar is for horn hunters and nothing that will benifit age or health of a herd with the bag limit set the way it is. If they will reduce the bag limit to 1 deer any size or sex it will come back to what it was. After letters and emails to tpw and not one responce it aint gonna happen anytime soon.

it's going to have to be property specific or else it is still going to be labeled as a blanket program.

At least the blanket would come closer to fitting the bed....

here's another example.... Deer here on our farm are rare in south central fannin county. However in Northeastern Fannin County near the federal lands and timber and red river and bois d'arc creek (a big creek)...they are more plentiful.

When the guidelines say in ETR, "Bubba, you can shoot four of them deer as long as you shoot the does during thanksgiving, and the bucks can't both be nice'uns".... guess what, there are people that shoot four, legally.

Look up the states Wildlife Management Units, and Regions for Wildlife... the ones in use today, not the proposed ones; It's scary.

I somewhat remember our parts of East Tx being tied in with ya'lls and that's just not good for anyone.

Like i said and tell these guys who know all, if ya aint hunting in the countys that are having problems you dont know squat. We dont tell you how it is in your county and i sure dont want them telling me about how it is in hopkins co unless you hunt there. Believe there are some areas in hopkins that are still doin good as far as numbers go but down in most areas.

So you are telling me that in general, as a buck gets older his antler spread does not increase? So if he is born with a 5" spread with spikes his spread is never going to increase? That is profound research coming from Hopkins County Texas. I bet no place else in the entire USA has ever seen a phenomenon like that, those deer must have a disease (sorry, I'm a sarcastic person, I would be this way in person too, so don't think less of me that I might be big shotting from a computer).

AR has everything to do with increased age limits on bucks. Now I totally agree with you and several others on here that are totally against AR's, that they should knock out the spike antlered buck kill. There's no need in it. They are basing this off of a controlled study in Kerrville, and it's crap. Not every yearling spike buck in Texas is inferior to a yearling buck that has a split main beam.

But in contrast to what you are saying, I totally disagree that antler spread is not an indication of an aging deer. Is it the greatest identifier, not hardly. But how many yearling bucks have you seen walking around with a 13" spread? Sounds like none. Sounds like you aren't seeing 3.5 or 4.5 yo bucks with a 13" spread either. It's unfortunate, but I do believe that yearling doe will eat just as good as that yearling buck with a 12" spread. And I do believe, in the long run, it will benefit the overall health of the deer herd (maybe not numbers), but deer size and YES ANTLER SIZE. Let's face it.... Thousands of hunters don't pay thousands of dollars every fall to go out and shoot a 90" whitetail rack. They pay the money at the chance to shoot that 150" deer. That's ultimately going to trump your meat hunting. Don't get me wrong either, I shot 3 does this year to fill my freezer, because I love to eat them. I could have killed spikes or bucks with a greater than 13" spread, but I personally know you can't eat the horns, but do know they sure look good on the wall. Now that's not to say, I see a 3.5 yo 6 point, he's going to see Jesus and he will not adorn my walls. My opinion. But just like everyone else on here, we all got one, they all stink and the TPWD ain't listening to none of them.

IF I were you Hoytman and you truly want to do something about the situation, you should start a Management Club with all your neighbors and put them under the MLD program. Then you can pretty much steer whatever management practice you want. That's what I am about to do. Either that or get the neighboring hunters kicked off their lease for littering onto our property. They have been throwing six volt batteries and other trash across the fence. All we did was ask them to move their feeder more than 15 yards from our fenceline.

It won't just selectively reduce it. It will devastate it, in fact, it has! And in an area that was just getting good.... we needed to grow the deer herd. We are no where near saturation rates.

Even in your example, which is best case scenario, you lost 6% of your doe herd the first year. Extrapolate that over the next five and see where the number's are? Couple that with increase buck harvest, lessening the breeding/birth/survival rates as well, and the number plummets. That's what has happened in these NE Texas counties, the numbers have just GONE.

The numbers just don't lie.

Your right i should have mentioned that we are already at a .7 doe to 1 buck ratio. It took alot of doe killing to get to that ratio.

For some reason with these posts its always the northern part of east texas vs the southern part. And its always the same arguments.

Maybe, just maybe it's because those two parts of Texas are so different. You can drive around and see over a hundred deer roaming around in a small neighborhood IN New Braunfels and never see that many in 10 years of hunting in the woods of East Texas and that was before ARs. ARs wouldn't be a be a big deal to me at all if I hunted an area like that where it's so easy to be picky about what deer you shoot. Down there, you don't "hunt" for deer, you just wait for the one you want to shoot. A buddy of mine who lives and hunts down there said that.

Curly where in Wood cty do you hunt? My first experience deer hunting was with my Grandfather and his brother around Hainesville. They used to have a great place that had a cabin right on Haines Lake. Used to love hunting the "Big Woods" as they called them.

338 let me ask you a hypothetical question? wich would you prefer? seeing deer everytime you went deer hunting altho most are does and young bucks with the occasional decent deer or not see any deer at all in multiple sittings and the only legal deer you saw was a doe and 3 small bucks in a whole season of hunting cause thats the difference ar has caused in the 5yrs in effect. Couldnt bring myself to shoot the only spike i saw all year, bow and gun combined. Now me being the meat hunter that i am i did shoot a doe in the 4 day season we have thats legal to shoot one. Did i mention the ONLY doe i saw during 4 day season. 5YRS ago i could have easily taken a doe during archery and a young 6 or 8pt with rifle and had lots of tender venison to feed the family and now its just a dream to expect to see more than a deer or to at best in a weekends hunting. Will not ever be happy with ar till the bag limit is lowered and the numbers come back, if they ever will! The worst part of all is my only hunting buddy [my daughter] wont hunt anymore because she wont sit in a stand waiting and waiting for a legal deer and ya know what? I DONT BLAME HER!

Please tell me you are joking.

No I was not....prove me wrong.

There wasn't anything wrong where we are before AR's, I sid then, and say now, it's a poor solution to a non-existent problem...

So before ARs, I guess folks were on here all the time fussing because they didn't have them and that we needed them?

Nope, they were apparently content and didn't come out of the woodwork till ARs were implemented and "we" said we hated them.

it came in the form of folks complaining about the neighbors shooting "My" deer.

Well they need to not let them roam free...they need to keep "their" deer penned up...I mean as long as the neighbors were hunting legally, what's the problem? If the neighbors weren't then ARs or any law won't help.

How about 70% of the users on this forum in favor - poll from last year.

I will see tomorrow if the TPWD can send me the results of their poll they took prior to implementing AR's - rest assured the majority were in favor.

Really????

They ones in favor of AR are like TU graduates. Im sure they exist, but they are few and far between.

Well duh...those in favor, well ARs apparently are working for them...the ones not in favor, ARs apparently aren't. You can poll all you want....I'm willing to bet most won't ever go along with the "majority" as long as the deer hunting in their area keeps sucking.

AR's stemmed from a few groups wanting to impose their ideas on everyone else, and having the right connections/money/voice to get it done. And it may be great where the herd can sustain the kill off. Glad for you. That's doesn't make it better, or right, for us.

I got no problem with it..that's just part of hunting. Our neighbor actually shot one of our feeder frequenters this year, below, but he said that it was the only legal buck he had seen hunting out behind his house.


cpl years ago, he shot this one...



part of hunting on small property...you win some, you lose some.

I just think common sense would have worked better and was working better. I dont need the TPWD to tell me how to manage my deer. I hunt my own land very little and I have fewer deer today than I had 8 years ago. If the people that hunt around me werent trying to kill 4 deer a year it would be better. Make it 1 buck and 2 does during Thanksgiving and we will have deer again.

I honestly think its folks watching TV or reading too much & thinking they need to be killing every doe they see to "help the herd" w/o having a friggin clue what they are doing. Like when one of my buddies that hunts HC came to the inlaws and saw 40 does in the backyard...all he said was "dang..ya'll need to kill some does" w/o knowing anything about the place...he changed his tune when we went for a drive and dropped down in the lower pastures where the bucks hang out.

Sure, there will always be a small minority group that has a problem with AR's due to the increased harvest numbers and/or having the TPWD dictate rules on their land.

So you agree the majority wanted AR's and the majority are seeing more and better deer, correct?

Don't you think "common sense" would tell everyone in your area that filling every tag on your license is wiping out the herd?

I "think" the majority of those who like ARs do not hunt East Texas, have always hunted that way, are mainly horn hunters and have always seen lots of deer and both sides were pretty much content before hand because if you wanted to impose an antler restriction on your place then you did, if not, that was okay too. That's just me and my opinion doesn't hurt anyone.

Take it down to 1 buck and the ones without common sense will leave for greener pastures

Curly, you may right on that front as my experience only comes from Coryell county and years ago in Hamilton. I would like to see the TPWD poll results from your neck of the woods.

Harvesting does is what should be regulated more than antlers. My deer are breed by the time doe days arrive and if she gets popped there goes her, her two fawns, and all that they would have produced down the road.

Lets say 1 buck and 1 doe. there is a novel concept.

Fixed it for you.

thats the problem...too many folks trying to fix something and screwing it up worse.

There, I fixed it for you....

Well at least if they are messing up my deer here, they aint screwing with my other place.

At least we can all agree on one thing.... we all like to kill deer. PEACE OUT FOR THE NIGHT.

Well, I believe it was broken. Sitting in a stand all year (for multiple years) and not seeing anything but little dink 2.5 year old bucks is not right to me. I don't have to see a 150" inch but would like to see something that would approach 120". This was my experience prior to AR's.

Now that AR's are in place I will see at least one mature buck every weekend. Again, it seems some of the AR haters think we are all after trophy deer and nothing could be farther from the truth. I just want to see mature bucks and everything that comes with them - fighting, dominance, rutting activity, etc. This was something that I did not see prior to AR's. I have finally seen all this in the last couple of years due to AR's - something I did not see in the previous 20 years of deer hunting.

I did not pull the trigger this year but passed on 12-15 bucks that would easily go over 13" and hell 200+ does. This was our best year ever thanks to AR's.

Letsgo we would like to see all the things you mentioned too but thanks to ar and the bag limits we dont see anything like that. If you truly see all the bucks and does that you say you are seeing i can see why you are pro ar! Now look at it in our position and how the numbers have crashed in the last 5yrs of ar rules and bag limits and you would understand OUR problem. Every time i go to this thread its painfully obvious that as long as its working for you its ok and the rest of us are sh@#$t outta luck. JMO.

I'd just like to see deer there.....

I hunted the Red River Counties and let me tell you, Antler Restrictions are working WELL there. Years ago, you were lucky to see deer, now you see them all the time.

The ONE thing I disagree on is the Doe's. Why in the heck would they make it a two doe limit, but your rifle season is from Thanksgiving to Sunday. Four days? From my experience, people would shoot any doe, regardless of size on those four days. Why not change the rule to ... One Doe, all seasons combined? That way people would be picky and shoot a good sized doe rather than fawns.

What part of Red River? I hear good things from the northern part, bad from the south where we are.

It's shear numbers game to me.

You said huntedd, what years where you there and why did you quit?

PRO AR ! Hamilton co has improved due to AR. Jack co got put on this past year and I promise It will improve the hunting there. All you east tx guys< how many of you agaist it, are in a bad hunter to land size situtation? This is the problem! If yall want alot of deer and big ones to go to the state and get your county put on lottery system. Then and only then will those areas be what you all say it should be numbers and size. It is hard for 12 poeple to have slice of pizza when there is only 8 slices.

our situation is 2 hunters to 652 (only 1 buck can be shot) and 8-10 on 5000 (only 8 bucks can be shot). PArt of hunting is that if you want to kill nice trophy class deer (for a given area), you have to be willing to lose...a lot, some folks just don't have it in them & b/c of that we have a 13" rule.

It still wasn't broke if you never was an exclusive trophy hunter.

it wasn't broke even if you were

I've hunted Lamar County, Delta County, Hopkin County, and Franklin County. All four of them have GREATLY IMPROVED with Antler Restrictions.

I've hunted those counties over 10 years. Like I said before, 10-12 years ago, you were LUCKY to see a deer, now you see lots of them. I'm so glade they put Antler Restrictions on and OUTLAWED deer hunting with DOGS. (I liked East Texas because it was easy to get to). Over 10 years ago, I swear people just shot whatever they saw. It also didn't help there was a bunch of poachers out there also.

Over the past 2004-2009, I've tagged out in those counties (I didn't hunt the same county each year). Usually I got my Buck within the first 3 weeks. Only in 2009 I didn't tag out, I passed on a buck that I thought would get better, and I didn't have a opportunity to get another.

Why did I move? I do not agree with the Doe rules in those counties. It really sucks to have to go Thanksgiving Day to Sunday to shoot your does. I would have MUCH preferred the state to Reduce the number of does from 2 to 1 and allow you to shoot the doe anytime you wanted than over 4 days. Plus I felt it was time to hunt a different part of the state (I went to Hill Country). BIG difference.

I have hunted hopkins co. 22yrs and the numbers HAVE NOT IMPROVED! I dont know where you get your info but the biologist who weighed my deer and aged it said the numbers of deer brought in to the meat locker are way down and the numbers of deer overall is down. Some areas are better than others but overall there down. Dont believe me ask the game warden or the local biologists. Cant say whats happening in the other countys but in hopkins they are DEFINATTLY DOWN. Doe tags and spike tag need to go.

how have yall's fawn crops looked? We've been up and down since '04 it seems, with more down than up.

rifleman ours is down but also overall doe numbers are way down.

that's going to create some problems then, not only now, but on down the road.

Yep i agree! Without those does, no bucks or does will be born. Wish they would make does archery only in hopkins and back to 1 buck only and the numbers will come back in my opinion.

The does being archery only is key. That's how it is in my county, where ARs are second only to god.

This is how it is at my in-law's place in Austin County where the AR's having proven a real God-send. That said I believe they'd be in the same situation as Curly, Sig, Hoytman, etc if hunters were given the greenlight to kill does outside of Archery season (LAMPS not withstanding). There's a good many does in their neck of the woods but not near enough to support everyone taking 2 each season. They still have the spike issue but fortunately they're not really experiencing a problem with themselves or surrounding landowner's shooting them (I know for a fact they're not killing spikes because they're all too excited about the results they're seeing 9 years into the program and are willing to wait for bigger bucks).

Based on what Curly and Sig are saying it almost sounds like the plan in Austin County would work better in Wood & southern Red River County than the one's they've got now.

I dont see how we can be looking at the same area. I now for a fact there are fewer deer here now than 10-12 years ago. We are hurting and we have more deer than any of the counties you have mentioned. If you tagged out in those counties you are the man, please come teach me how its done.

You have that much acreage and that low of a hunter density and you still arent seeing a change in the age structure of your herd after five years. Something is fishy here.

And by the way, the whole mind set in east texas was totally wrong. There was a ton of us out there that were sick to death of putting our time and effort into proper management pratices only to have the guys (so called meat hunters) all around us shoot every deer that walked out. It real hard to sit and pass up nice 2.5 to 3.5 year old deer year after year knowing they will get shot as soon as they cross the fence. But we continued to do so for 15 years and now we have some help. So yes those of us who have been doing it properly for sometime now are glad our work and patience has paid off and are thankful for the help from tpwd. Minus the spike and 2 doe tags.

Well, just to reiterate, I am lucky enough to hunt in Foard (no AR's but need it!), Archer(just got AR's, prolly good there) REAL.. just shoot more; and Fannin/Red River.

Trying to compare those three regions, is ridiculous. Nearly as bad as hunting Hamilton and Jack and telling us what's wrong with Fannin/Red River/Hopkins.... or lumping all of east texas into one rule...

I couldnt agree more. Thats where the mld program comes in. Its property specific

I know, it sux when "your neighbors" shoot deer you think they shouldn't even if they are legal or more specifically, shoot your deer.

5000 is a work in progress since it's former type2. The 652 has been steady and structure seems to depend on the fawn crops. Prior to that were 12K and 15K acre leases and things were steady on them until doe harvests got ramped up in '04.

No one said anything about them being "my" deer. Shooting a young buck is just bad management. Wheres the frigging challenge in that. Shoot a mature buck or go home without one or kill a doe. I never understood people who think its ok to shoot an immature buck. Lets face it none us hunt because its the only way to put food on the table. Its for the challenge, the camp life (relaxation) and the hunt. Emphasis being on the hunt. How hard is it to throw up a feeder and stand and kill an young buck. Its not, and i was tired of seeing all my efforts wasted by the "meat hunters" next to us. I put meat hunters in quotations because what they really are is lazy hunters.

Well folks, looks like this here thread won't last much longer. Hide and watch, arrogance is flaring again. It's getting personal now.

So to you from the way I read this, the "hunt" as you call it is about the kill now right?

I'm confused too.

there is also a 1200 acre tract that doesn't seem to have an age structure issue...bucks are scattered now b/c of wells and pipeline crews, but there has been zero change since ARs went in.

should buy stock in popcorn, btw

Some people think that when fishing and catching bass they should all be released. Some people will not keep a Crappie unless it's 14 inches long. Should TP&W raise the Crappie limit to 14 inches and make Bass a "catch and release" only fish? After all, all the "meat fisherman" must be ruining the resource for everybody, right? In my opinion it IS ok to shoot an immature buck if YOU are happy with shooting an immature buck. Before AR's, we were allowed 1 buck per year. If you wanted to use your tag on a young one, then so what. Too many people forget over time how excited they got when they shot their first 1 1/2 year old basket rack buck. Now we have taken that away from our kids. Good job TP&W!

I would but I'm too lazy.

I might just be Orvil Redenbachers grandson...

that would make sense then

Unlike ARs in certain counties.

And you know this how?

Farmer Joe on Sawmill Rd said so

Experienced it since they were implemented. So there.....

Just who's side are you on anyway?

All camp life and other things that are associated with hunting yes, ultimately its about the kill. Its why we hunt isnt it?
The hunt is the challenge and experience of killing a mature animal. One thats a worthy advisary. When we are kids a young buck was a worthy advisary and my first buck was a 2.5 year old eight point. Lets face it we are all adults now and its human nature to want to challenge yourself. anything less in my eyes is lazyness. but if killing young bucks satisfies you then more power to you. I am just putting my point of view on here just like the rest of you. Sorry if you dont agree with it.

It seems you are also saying anyone who doesn't share your point of view is lazy or less of a hunter.

the side that lets folks shoot what they want as long as it's within the bag limit...a legit bag limit. (I just remember that from the BP debate)

so let me hear your point of view. Instead of just mocking everyone on here. Why do you hunt?

jbs8307...I am curious as to how old are you and how long have you been "hunting"?

Also just curious as to whose ethics and morals should we choose to hunt by? The ones we were raised with or yours? Just curious.

Dude, did you really ask Curly for his point of view on AR's? I'll summarize. He hates them worse than I do.

Sorry, replied to wrong guy.....

Understood before you reposted.

what does that have to do with anything? Does my age make my opinion worth any less?

Where have you been? My point of view has been stated many times. Hunt how you want as long as you keep it legal and do not shove your way of hunting down my throat if I hunt legal and don't hunt like you do, big deal. I enjoy getting out, being with friends and family and taking legal deer. If I get lucky enough to bag a trophy then great but if I don't I'll be glad to take a legal deer period. If you disagree with anything I said then fine but do not talk down to me. I ain't lazy, I bust my butt year after year to have a successful hunt which to me is to get venison and as long as I accomplish that legally, there should be nothing wrong with it.

No i asked him why he hunts? I think we all know everyone that visits this site's opinion on ars. Its been beatin to death about twice a week since they implemented them.

Well apparently.......

Sig, I have a question for you since I do not know the answer to this. I do not have to deal with ARs since under MLD. We have to have a management plan in effect and do census to get tags. Does TPW not do the census anymore in your counties? In the 70's or so no census was done by landowners but as a landowner we had to go to the county to get our doe tags. The land we owned was south of a state HWY and we were allowed 1 doe tag for every 250 acres and step across that same HWY and we could get 1 for every 50 acres. Do you think that type of system would help you area? Would a co-op with larger numbers of people and more voice involved be an option to get relief for you? Just curious.

Just curious no big deal. Your age will tell about a lot of things and you opinion is just that your opinion and it is yours to speak just as mine is mine to speak.

We are ARs but also on LAMPS and we have to fill out and send in a census every year on deer we have taken. In 30 years, it has not changed the amount of doe permits we get every year. 3 per 200 acres.

26 here

When i made my first comment i wasn't talking to you. I just posted my general point of view. It wasn't until you made the "your deer" comment that i quoted anything you said.

Thats why i hunt too. Its the only time i get to see alot of my family. Im not trying to shove my way of hunting down your throat. I could care less what you do on your lease and I wasnt trying to talk down to you, you seem like a great guy. We actually agree on ars for the most part. I just dont appreciate being mocked for having a different opinion.

Point taken but I didn't like being called lazy because, yes, I consider myself a meat hunter, therefore I felt like I was being called lazy. The point about calling them "your deer" well that's probably my bad because I was raised as long as your neighbors are hunting legally, you have nothing to say even if you don't like the fact that they are shooting a young buck or doe as long as they are within the TP&W laws, you don't own the deer so basically, mind your own business, shut up and hunt (not directing that at you at all, just a general statement on how I was raised hunting).

The solution is right in front of all of you that dont think the regulations are working. Its the mld program. I dont understand how anyone could feel as strongly about something and not go out and do something about it.

Well i apologize for that then.

so we should go and shoot 80-100 does on that 5000 acres like their state biologist suggested?

They just don't hand out MLD cause someone wants them. It takes years of records and a management plan to get one. If you do not have enough acres then it is even tougher. Pooling ranches and acres might help but can be tough to get everyone in agreement to do so and then getting follow through would be tougher also. Get a TPW biologist who is a newbie and make it x5 tougher to get an MLD. You are very lucky if you have MLD on LF property.

The MLD has to issued to the land owner not leasee, if I understand it right, I don't think many land owners really care about MLD.

I am not your biologist so how would i know. How long were you on the program? What was your ratio based on your stand observations? What is your habitat like? ect............ I know that there are good biologist and bad. When we started our biologist would take us in the woods and show us what plants the deer ate at what times of the year. He would recomend habitat improvements and so on. We have had three biologists since then and i cant say much about any of them because they really arent involved.

No, the land owner doesnt have anything to with it. Ours is timber property and is all ran by our lease president.

I agree but to me it sounds like alot of these guys qualify. If nothing else make up some observation sheets and start keeping your own records. I look foward to seeing all the numbers crunched everyyear. Ill agree its a process but its more than worth it in my opinion.

How many acres is your MLD lease?

2400 with 11 memebers and a ton of kids. We have to shoulder mount our bucks and kids shoot what ever they want for they're first buck. We usually get 10 does tags and 10 buck tags with no more than four bucks being quality ones. (mature trophies)

wasn't on the program, the projected numbers didn't go over well, the difference between what he said and the one that was brought out there to hunt and observe came up with a difference of about 60 does.

Hardwoods, pine plantation and about 3000 acres of select cut plantation that is thick as heck. (scheduled to have 50-100 acres of foodplots pushed in the select cut areas this summer)

Ratio should be roughly 3:1.

We arent as serious as its sounds. A mistake buck just costs you a cord of firewood. ($125) We just wanted to make a place close to home to have a legitimate shot at a 160 plus buck. It took 14 years to get one that big last year and we got one this year too. The average buck is in the high 130s to mid 140s.

Try asking a TPW biologist about MLD on 500 to 800 acres and see what he tells you. Most guys here that are not liking the AR's are on smaller places and some on larger ones. You are very lucky to get MLD on that place but I am betting the total acreage of the timber co. is what got you the MLD. What is your deer density? Lucky in the fact also that one guy gets left out of a buck and 6 do not get a trophy even if you have them. Just curious if kids shoot whatever they want does it count against your 10 buck tags?

i have to agree with you thats sounds like a ton of does for that acreage in east texas. The most we have ever been issued is 15 for 2400 acres. And that was way back when we were trying to get our ratio right. We are .7 does to 1 buck now.

I'll try. We've dealt with MLD and LAMPS and the county system years ago too.

TPW only data from Red River or Fannin comes from check stations on government land, game warden reports(which are only on illegal deer), and MLD census. In fact, in many of their years of data, all they have are game warden reports, which for several years it was very few, like 6 or 8 deer that made the entire data set for that year. (I published it on here once, but don't have a link)


In visiting with Mitch Lockwood and others with TPWD Big Game division, they are aware of the inadequacies of their current data system; and of the regional application of that data. They too want to bring data down to a local level and the management goals at that level too. The need complete use of Texas Wildlife Info. Mgmt System (TWIMS) which needs more funding. They also need to fully fund and staff their statistics branch and several other offices. (I was a critic of the department, I am not now, just a critic of the current system).

I don't think a cooperative is the answer. Landowners overall, tend to be very skeptic of the government. Especially as many absentee landowners as there are there and considering the area was a government/paper mill/EPA area that was sold off and many are not happy with the government anyway....

With the areas we manage in several counties, it's hard to find landowners that are willing to do MLD. MOst want NO part of the government if they can keep from it.

WE have ran this one before by TPWD. The landowner MUST have designated the president or whoever as his AGENT.

I was late then. I was not against them till I saw the lack of deer after a couple of years.....

Depends on what the kids shoot. If its a promising 3.5 year old ten then we call it a qaulity buck. If its a 2.5 or 3.5 year old six then its a cull. We try to use our best judgement.

Actually what got us on the program was our old biologist. We kept bringing nice bucks to the processor where ages and measures them and he asked us if we were interested in signing up.

Deer density is 5 deer per 100 acres.

I really dont have a problem not killing a buck every year. I have killed three trophies in 15 years. I am just thankful to have a oportunity at a big buck. Its part of the deal. We all know east texas deer populations cant support everyone getting a big buck every year. Besides our idea of what a big buck is a gradually progressed over the years to the point where shooting 4 bucks that we call trophies would be real tough.

Lazy hunters? Wow, sorry I am late to this party.


The solution to me is 1 doe or doe tags. I have no problem killing a mature buck, heck that is all I shoot. I have done fairly well here in NE TX. I dont like the rule as it stands. I dont think we can stand 2 does and a spike and a mature deer. That is too much pressure. MLD is difficult to optain and the owner has to be a part of it. As a landowner I have looked into forming one with a neighbor. The red tape was more than I wanted and luckily I backed out before starting. He passed and now I have 8 hunters on his 500 acres leased by his wife, and they hammer any and all.

Info is at http://texasleasehunting.com/huntingleasegamemanagement/managedlanddeerpermits.html

15K acre place I was on was getting in the 220-280 range for several years... that slaughter spilled over to anyone and everyone around us (but we were told if we didn;t shoot them, they wouldn't bring in the 20 bred TTT deer from STX. This was after staying in the 100-120 range for year. They screwed that place up so bad they dropped members like crazy, had to give up 3600 acres of it to keep the price in the 2K range and still have heck keeping members b/c it ticked everyone off.

I dont like the rule as it stands either. Change to 1 buck 13" or bigger, no spike tag, 1 doe tag and make an age exemption for mature bucks under 13"

I dont like and age limit. I am a seasoned hunter with many kills and I know deer very well, but I am not 100% accurate. I have takenthe jaw off at least a dozen of my kills to be aged and I am about 75%.

Wow! Is that just for does? I can see why you would be hesitant.

I think 1 deer per 100 acres is a sustainable number for most of east texas.

Doesnt have to be to the year. Just mature or not mature. Let the game warden use his judgement and know that if you shoot one your not sure of your fate is in his hands.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Are you serious?

Im just trying to please all parties. Personally i believe the numbers are narrow racked (under 13')mature deer are so small that it doesnt really need changing.

Wouldnt it be nice though if we could just trust our law enforcement to inforce the intent of the law rather than the black and white of the law itself.

that was just for does... usually in the neighborhood of 70mgmt tags and 25 cull tags for that place. It didn't have the population they were estimating and it showed up. Pre-slaughter, if you hunted and actually spent some time out there you could kill a deer in the 130s-160s every year. There were deer bigger than that on the place, but it was heck trying to find one during season. (or if you did, remove head from rearend and make sure your bottom cam isn't going to smack the rail on your climber )

lol i have been there. Bottom cam hit my seat and missed a beautiful 9 point at 13 yards

I agree the landowner does not have to have any knowledge of the program at all. Ours doesn't. If you have a written lease with your name on it, you are automatically the "agent". We have only 700 acres and had no problem getting in the MLD program at all. One phone call and meeting with the Biologist and been in it ever since.

I have been told by the TPWD in MP that as a landower I have to a party to the MLD program. That was as it stood 2 years ago.

Maybe it has changed since we started the program. This is our 6th or 7th year in it.

No idea.

how has its worked for yall so far bowslayer?

It has worked pretty well as far as growing mature bucks. We do see more mature bucks now than we ever did but they are 90% on game cameras and at night. There has only been 1 buck shot this year and that was pretty much the only one of the mature bucks that has been seen. They go nocturnal quick in East Texas. I would say that the program works well but you can't shoot what you can't see in daylight.

Here is one of our mature bucks. Pretty great deer for the area I hunt. Now if he would just show himself in the daylight!

I know where you coming from. We get most of our big ones in oct. I have shot both of my big ones in oct 137" nine point on oct 28th and this year a 165" 10 point on oct 29th. The one i killed this year had never been seen during the day. I had about 6 pics of him last year and another guy had one pic of him in august this year. If we didnt have the early season at least 50 percent of our bucks would have never been shot.

Thats a great buck. The long brows with alot of character is one of my favorite things about our area and yours too apparently.

good read on that...that hits close to home

http://www.northamericanwhitetail.com/huntingtactics/NAWhill_102605/

This is the one i got this year:

Yep, that pretty much sums it up...

I have not shot a buck on our lease since we started the program. Not 1. I keep thinking that the more mature bucks we get the more visible they will become but that has not been the case.

Great read i had to laugh when i read the part about the old buck waddling behind. My brother witnessed 8 bucks chasing a doe this year and the 8th one was an old potbellied 8 point with kickers way at the back of the line.

It deffinately isnt the case. 4.5 is about as mature as they get and still be seen where we hunt. We have killed maybe 6 out of probably 30-40 bucks in 15 years that were 5.5 -6.5. We have never killed one over 6.5.

I wouldnt have got my buck this year if i hadnt spent the last 3 years clearing an old logging road and a lane between some pines deep in my woods. He wasnt coming anywhere near the roads and pipelines.

Exactly. I posted the response from TPWD on here directly. It said that clear as day, but some know the law better than TPWD.

I wonder if this what the other East texas guys are experiencing - due to AR's the bucks are getting older and thus much harder to hunt?

I know this much: almost everyone on our lease has game cameras out the majority of the year. We're getting lots of pictures of more and more mature bucks but we're damn sure not killing them. 12 hunters on our lease and we killed a whopping 2 bucks this year. Very, very disappointing. But not surprising I suppose given the flighty nature of east TX whitetails in general.

maybe that's it, after being hunted for 300 years, the bucks finally figured us out! And then took the does with them!

And I am sure the hunting pressure has been the same over the last 300 years, right? Do you honestly think a mature buck is not more hesitant to step out during the daylight? How do you explain what the other East Texas hunters are explaining here? I know on my ranch in Central Texas once a deer hits 4.5 years old they become scarce during the daylight.

There's no doubt. But to say that's the reason we see ZERO deer in places we used to witness 20 a day is taking it to an extreme, as I attempted to illustrate with sarcasm.... It would not account for not seeing any deer.

15 pages later I think its safe to come on out

that really sounds like what was going on where the doe harvest quotas jumped way up on some of the MLD leases I was hunting. I hunted an area of about 800 acres all to myself that was below flood level (b/c I was the newbie/youngun and the old-timers didn't like messing with the snakes and all the water) and after the first yr slaughter, I was still seeing a decent amount of deer (stand was on an old logging road down through a hardwood bottom that I could cover a 500yd straight-away). But 3 years into it, my trips of seeing 10-40 deer dwindled down to where I would see whatever small group lived under my feeders. Buck sightings were way down b/c the older age class was there, but not near the number of younger bucks I was used to seeing.

...and finally...I got to thinking about a common thread amongst my friends that hunt ranches west and south of Deep East Texas (that don't have ARs) "Yeah I shot a cull buck(sic) this weekend. I've been watching that same 8 point for 4 years now, never was going to amount to anything." Soooo... If genetics don't have anything to do with narrow racks or wide racks, why is his buck a cull and my narrow rack (that would be a personal trophy) different. Why can he shoot a 4.5 year old and call it a "cull" and I can't shoot a 4.5 8 pt with a 12 31/32" spread. I know, I know, it's the LAW !!So tell me the state isn't trying to manage horns instead of herd. Idiots!
I am sick and tired of the inequity visited on hunters who just want to hunt. What damage are we doing to our younger generation of hunters? Especially those who can't afford to hunt on $3-5,000/yr leases? Are we all supposed to worship at the altar of the Almighty Horn? We better re-think this crap or lose future hunters to video games. And yes, I hunt Tyler Co., home of the oldest narrow rack deer!

those Neches River bottom Tyler Co deer are just products of their environment....it is thick like no other.

Question for you....I know that on ranches where I have been that we shoot lots of doe the numbers of deer seen period decrease due to the new pressure on the herd. Most of these ranches are HF so the deer numbers are still there but the sighting have gone way down. Do you think that due to shooting high numbers on a place with low hunting pressure would be part of the problem? You mentioned that the newbie location was remote and had lots of deer then changed? Was the hunting pressure in the new place making the deer more difficult to see? Were you shooting lots of doe and hogs in the new area? Just curious. I know from my years of doe management after years of shooting them they are harder to see than a mature buck in most instances.

Is that directed at me by chance? Nevermind, not gonna go down that road again. Believe what you want to...

I wasn't killing my does down there... we had 2 stand locations we could choose and I would hunt my other stand (above flood level about 3 miles away) to shoot does to keep the pressure off the deer down in the bottom. I shot hogs down there, but not during season, I'de work on them during the spirng & summer. Even the places away from my actual stand set-up weren't producing the deer numbers and I was covering some ground through open timber and looking over grown up clearcuts from my climber at drains and old roads that deer would use to cut across from the creeks to sloughs.

Whenever I go out to those counties, I always see deer. You have to do certain things to keep them around. I routinely saw 8-10 deer under my feeder every morning, and 5-8 deer every evening. Heck during the day the deer used to bed down near my feeders.

I would disagree with you, in the east texas counties I meantioned there are MORE deer than 10-12 years ago. Perhaps on the land you hunt, you've put too much pressure on the deer?

On the lands I hunt on, we've made the rules that you can not drive a ATV. Those things flat out scare deer in East Texas.

We also set up multiple feeders and we don't hunt the same feeder more than 3 times a season.

If you are near a river, hunt near the river. I was lucky enough to hunt off the Sulpher River and noticed that Bucks used that river to go trolling for Does.

Finally you need to limit the amount of hunters you have on the lease. The last place I hunted, it was 2000 acres, and we only had 6 hunters. I only like to hunt in East Texas if we have at least 300 acres per hunter. Whenever I get that ratio, I've almost always tagged out. The problem comes in when landowners try to get 1 hunter per 100 acres. It just doesn't work in East Texas, theres not enough deer to support that. But at 300 acres per hunter, the deer will not be pressured as hard.

I own the land and there have been 4 killed in 8 years and the numbers are going down. I appreciate your helpful post, I was being a smartaxx and you make a post in repsonse that is polite and helpful.


I do not have the deer I had back in the 90's.

Why does everyone (myself included) insist on hunting feeders in east texas anyway. I havent seen one deer under either one of my feeders while hunting this year. But they will happily eat the corn i put out on the lanes in my woods. You guys are lucky they are even coming to your feeders.

Not everyone does. I am 250 yards down a trail going to my foodplot. I have been very successful in the area and I know how to kill big deer, but I cant kill what is no longer around.

helps concentrate those deer pockets...back when I was living in the area and could hunt basically every day, only time I would hunt a feeder was if I was running late or was flat out stumped.

This is a great conversation and a great thread.

In addition to the article on how older bucks go nocturnal, I have found the comments on the decimation of doe populations through over harvest very interesting. As recently as last week, I had a friend classify me as "another german hard head" when I mentioned the over harvest of does.

Don't get me wrong. I am in favor of limited doe hunting to keep the herd in balance with the carrying capacity of the land.

I do think that doe harvest can be taken to an extreme. Let me give an example of my experience with a pasture where I first hunted back in '67 and off and on over the years. The area was full of deer back then. We saw deer every time we hunted. At that time there were no doe permits. Flash forward 40+ years. The place is now part of a management coop. Last year there was a doe permit for about every ten acres. This year there was a permit for every 15 acres.

I had not hunted the place in a few years when I went back there to assist the landowner with the harvest and help my teenage son harvest a doe. We only got to hunt a couple times, briefly saw a few does and heard a lot of shooting. I did not let my son shoot the "does" we saw because we could not get a clear view of their heads to make sure he would not shoot a nubbins buck.

This year, we hunted the place four times. We saw two bucks, one greater than 13" that we passed and zero does. Again, there was a lot of shooting in the area.

I am not sure that the high harvest of does has been good for that area. From my observations, it may have been over done.
Perhaps, the managers are trying to get to a one to one ratio.
Even that does not make sense to me. I have read the post on the benefit of all does being bred at the same time and that did not make good sense to me. There is actually safety in diversity of fawn drop in my opinion and it is for the same reason that monoculture of cultivars in orchards is not the best idea. In a monoculture, the entire crop is subceptible to the same dangers, such as late freeze, or insect predation, etc. How can it be any different with the deer? This is why the Good Lord arranged for the does to come into estrus several times or until bred. I am no expert in deer management and I am not pretending to be, but this makes more sense to me.

As bad as it's been in the past couple of years, I shutter to think of how little deer I would see if I didn't hunt a feeder.

Curly, you ever get any pics of the buck that kept giving you the slip from last season?

Nope, nobody on our lease did either. Wonder what happened to the old boy?

no telling, he may have cut his range down or summer did him in.

look at the tongue stickin' out...pretty sure he's just messing with you.

He messed with me all last year!!!

don't remember that one, but that's priceless.

Smart aleck buck!

I would bet that buck was covering some ground.

He got pretty scarred up the later in the season it got. According to pictures only of course.

hopefully you'll see him next season. After 100s of pics of the one I was after last season, I got .5 a pic of him this season. It was pretty dang annoying.

But the folks several miles off that had a cpl pics of him too last year didn't have any this yr and I didn't see "his" woman but once this year so I'm banking on them being hunkered down somewhere.

One fact nobody talked about, on the decrease in deer. The pigs population has exploded over this same time frame as the deer number went down, They will compete for food and eat the acorns when available. Hammer the the pigs put out year round food plots, supplimental feed stations and you can expect to carry around 45 deer per square mile and can expect to harvast about 1/3 the population every year. That means 12 to 15 deer per sq mile. Under the current pig number I would bet on aroung 20 to 25 per sq mile. Which drops the numbers of harvast to 7 or 8 per sq mile. So if the lease hunts one hunter per 100. It only takes one or two years to hammer the deer population in that area

Yea and no. We have had pigs on the homeplace for 25 years and at the lease in Cass county since 96. We have hammered the hell outta the pigs. We dont see many in Cass anymore, none this year at all and they have been scarce here for 5 years or so, but the deer have gone down and stayed down for the last 8 to 10 years.

I saw them on the place I was on, but they were there when I got there along with the deer. The folks up high in the plantations rarely saw hogs or had pics of hogs.

Them hogs just a way of following you around to harass you..

lol..the prob I have now was nothing like then. I was guaranteed to see between 20-60 an evening.

With that many hogs they might not have been scarying your deer away as much as eating them

true.. deer didn't mind them being there as much as I did. They got ticked off more at the mallards and woodies that would waddle over from the sloughs.

With that many hogs they have got adapt or move on to new ground if there is anything like that left there.

they both moved around. The hogs would fluctuate with the acorns, a lot of the deer would too. Folks just don't realize how far deer will move when they start dropping. I was getting 1 buck on cam that the guy who got me on that lease had on cam all summer 4.5 miles off. We see the same mess @ the inlaws, the deer are concentrated in the back yard until the acorns start falling, then your pet does stick around and the bucks drop off to the river bottom despite having to deal with the hogs.

Interesting...2000 acres with a mile of Neches riverfront, cypress brakes, ridges, and not a single hog this year or last, day or night, in the flesh or on Gcams...go figure. Deer season still sucked.

they seem to be hit or miss in those parts for whatever reason..club down river from ya'll had them real bad from 00-05 then for a cpl years they slacked up to the point where sightings or pics were rare, then this yr they picked back up again.

I'm hungry.

x2 and

The deer numbers will be affected by hogs if the hog numbers aren't kept under control, just like the rabbit and coyote populations control each other, lots of coyotes and then you have very few jack rabbits, lots of Jack rabbits then you know the coyote controls are working

If the pigs are really gone, they had some mighty hard pressure,
I've never seen a area that had lots of hogs ever go down to none.All it takes is one sow with a belly full to start it all over again.

I'd like to know what that big bruiser field dressed, he sure looks big in that pic, thats for sure.

I Wonder what he would grow into next year?

Could always shoot one of those tasty ones like what's under the feeder

with our current hog situation, only thing they can do really is move up to the pine plantations. They run into a large body of water if they try to do anything else.

The body weight is improving but antler size is yet to be determined after the 2nd yr with AR's.

We have alot of hogs but had em long before ar rules.

25 hogs per square mile would be a ton of hogs; We don't have that many hogs anywhere we hunt.

pretty sure that fella was talking about deer per sq mile...which would require a lot of folks to not pull the trigger for a while.

Pass the butter please.

The hill country runs above 50 per sq mile but does lack the food, south tx runs around 35 per sq mile. North west tex will run 15 or so but due to the LARGE size of ranges and acres per hunter the hunting is good to great. Every mouth eating food is a less food that the deer have. AR is good with-in reason but it will not fix a problem of too many hunters per sq mile. We could put east tex in a lottery style system

Or we could go back the way we were and me and curly and vernon would be happy!!!!!!!

Where did you get you deer population numbers from? You keep blaming the problem on hunters and hunting pressure and that is true to a point. But habitat can only support so may deer. So if prior to ARs ranches had enough deer for their hunters, what is the problem now with ARs from if they have the same hunters then and now? Just curious.

Basically it's "anything BUT ARs".

oh wait....

judging from curly's pic of his stand set-up, habitat should be getting better for deer every year.

I think Curly's main problem with his deer numbers are is that his deer are just plain lazy. They are so lazy they just can't even stand up and eat so they are starving to death.

that hadn't crossed my mind.

Heck I bet they are so lazy that they don't even try to rut from looking at that buck.

LMAO... with my limited knowledge of NE Tx deer, I would have to guess that one was covering a lot of ground trying to find himself an isolated bordello. And when that is hard to find it turns into hard work...so he bellied up to the local corn sprinklin' hole. I'm probably wrong like in most cases, but it's a scenario.

I guess us lazy meat hunters have lazy deer.

A match made in heaven then? but destroyed by ARs

and pigs and neighbors and ourselves........

his are old & lazy...our start out that way...it has to be the video games!!!

the bad thing is for ARs, that's 2 (two) legal deer in that pic....vs. 1 pre-AR

hopefully this will still be around when I return from the no-deer country of East Tx

Ya'll have a good weekend!

In RMU 18 for 05 thru 08 the deer per 1000 acres according to the state were 16,14,8,12....

That's northern fannin, north adn eastern lamar, southern red river, Franklin, titus, Hopkins wood, rains, and the next two counties south of there...

Seems like decreasing numbers to me, and that's cherry picking those counties for the better parts for numbers...

Break the facts easy to 'em Sig.

Pro ar guys dont care about facts as long as it works for them! I sure am getting old and grumpy and not to mention sarcastic other than that im fine. LMAO!

Not sure what RMU is but I call B.S. on those number.A biologist would drop the harvest plan to maybey One doe and One buck. They alway rate it in deer per SQ mile and the numbers you just said would be 6 to 8 per SQ mile. The harvest number would be in the ONE mature buck no doe,s or no harvest at all. I would bet the hunter numbers are 3x higher than 10 years ago. The number of people that live in those areas has also increased. This is fragmenting the land causing the deer to move out of the area. East tx can,t be managed like the rest of the state. Average land size holding , number of hunters and land practice has all affected the number of deer.

You can call BS all you want, those were in a published report from TPWD! And they do use per 1000 acres!
RMU is Resource Management Unit.

That's hillarious, you agree totally with what we have said for 43 pages!!!

Here's the header from that page...spacing won't copy but each line was a column header


Table 2. Population-density estimates for each Resource Management Unit (RMU) and ecoregion.
RMU
Year
Deer/1000 ac (95% CI)
ac/deer (95% CI)
%CV Model fitted
GOF


Love that, calling BS on the numbers!

Antler Restriction Regulation
Background
There has been much discussion among hunters and landowners over the past several years regarding the antler-restriction regulation currently in effect in 61 Texas counties. This web page is intended to provide Texas landowners and hunters a comprehensive overview of this unique antler-restriction harvest strategy.


The Experiment
During the late '90s, landowners and hunters in Austin, Colorado, Fayette, Lavaca, Lee, and Washington counties requested a hunting regulation that would offer more protection to immature bucks. As is the case in many of the one-buck counties in Texas, hunting pressure on bucks was extremely high in this particular area, and very few bucks were allowed to reach maturity. Poor age structure within a buck herd has many adverse effects, including poor hunter satisfaction. Research results indicate that poor age structure among bucks results in longer breeding seasons, and therefore, longer fawning seasons - which is a factor contributing to poor fawn production.

In response to an overwhelming request for a change, the TPW Commission adopted an experimental antler-restriction regulation in 2002 which read as follows:

A legal buck deer is defined as having a hardened antler protruding through the skin AND:
At least one unbranched antler; or
An inside spread measurement between main beams of 13 inches or greater; or
Six points or more on one antler.
The primary goals of the experimental antler-restriction regulation were:

Improve the age structure of the buck herd;
Increase hunter opportunity; and
Encourage landowners and hunters to become more actively involved in better habitat management.
This regulation was designed to reduce the intense hunting pressure on bucks, particularly young bucks. As can be seen in the chart below, the proportion of bucks <3.5 years old in the harvest dropped from 79% (prior to the experimental regulation) to <30% during the past 4 hunting seasons. Prior to the regulation, only 20% of the harvested bucks were at least 3.5 years old. However, during the past 4 hunting seasons, more than 70% of the harvested bucks were at least 3.5 years old. It appears that the 2005-06 modification to the regulation (described below) provided more relief to the 2.5- and 3.5-year-old bucks, while a few more yearlings (i.e., "spikes") were harvested, as expected. It is important to note that buck harvest dropped 38% during the first year of the experiment, as compared to the average harvest from 1997-2001. However, harvest during the second year of the experiment (2003-04) exceeded the 5-year average prior to the regulation change. This may be considered a 1-year "sacrifice" for those accustomed to bagging a buck annually; however, the severity and duration of this "sacrifice" period is largely dependent on fawn production the year prior to the regulation change and the first year of the regulation. Modifications to this regulation (described below) appear to minimize the severity of the "sacrifice."



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Where Next?

Landowners and hunters throughout Texas have been following the results of this experimental regulation with much interest. We have been receiving requests for such a hunting regulation in numerous counties for the past few years. In considering these requests, we decided to give most attention to one-buck counties in which at least 60% of the buck harvest is comprised of bucks <3.5 years of age. Hunting pressure of this magnitude has deleterious effects on the population, including those mentioned above. The map to the right shows the counties (in green) currently affected by this regulation as well as the general areas (in orange) where TPWD is considering antler restrictions for the 2009-2010 hunting season. The regulation proposal reads:

A legal buck deer is defined as having a hardened antler protruding through the skin AND:
At least one unbranched antler; or
An inside spread measurement between main beams of 13 inches or greater.
Bag limit 2 bucks: No more than 1 buck may have an inside spread of 13 inches or greater. [In other words, one may harvest 1 buck with at least 1 unbranched antler and 1 buck with an inside spread of 13 inches or greater. Or, one may chose to harvest 2 bucks with at least 1 unbranched antler. BUT, one may NOT harvest 2 bucks with an inside spread of 13 inches or greater.]

If this type of hunting regulation is proposed for any other county in Texas, the proposal will read exactly as written above. You will notice that the criterion for 6 points on an antler was removed in an effort to simplify the regulation. Three years of harvest data indicated that less than 2% of all bucks harvested were legal based on that criterion alone (see table below). In other words, most bucks with 6 points on one antler also have an inside spread of 13 inches or greater. There was no biological reason for maintaining that as a criterion for a legal buck; therefore, we simplified the regulation by defining a legal buck based on only the 2 criteria listed above.

How Can TPWD Assume What Works in Those 6 Experimental Counties Will Work in Other Ecoregions Within Texas?

Heavy hunting pressure is not a factor of habitat conditions. When so few bucks "slip through the cracks" and reach maturity, there is an obvious problem with hunting pressure on young bucks. This strategy will reduce hunting pressure on most immature bucks, whether they're walking in the Pineywoods, Post Oak Savannah, Cross Timbers and Prairies, or Edwards Plateau. Furthermore, data from the other areas (55 counties) affected by this regulation are showing similar improvements in the population.

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The Specifics...
Why add a second buck to the bag? And why make "spikes" legal?

Year At least one
unbranched
antler Inside spread
>= 13" 6+ points on
one side,
inside spread
< 13" Total
deer
2002-03 257 334 9 600
2003-04 260 567 11 838
2004-05 132 499 7 638
2005-06 213 610 N/A 823
2006-07 271 653 N/A 924
2007-08 149 475 N/A 624
The table to the right shows the number of legal deer brought to the voluntary check stations during each year of the experimental regulation. During the first year, roughly 43% of all bucks checked were "spikes." For the purposes of this report, the term "spikes" includes all deer with at least one unbranched antler. The statewide harvest data indicates that 95% of all deer with at least 1 unbranched antler have less than a total of 4 points. During the second year of the regulation, only about 31% of all bucks brought to check stations were "spikes." The harvest of spikes dropped to only 20% (of the total buck harvest) during the final year (2004-05) of the experiment. This is not a result of there being fewer spikes during the second and third years. Rather, this is a result of far more bucks with an inside spread of 13 inches or greater - simply because there were a lot more 3.5- and 4.5-year-old bucks than ever before. With so many more "quality" bucks available for harvest, and only 1 buck tag available, few hunters chose to use their only buck tag on a spike. The likely result was high-grading of the buck population. Therefore, the regulation was modified (adding a second buck to the bag, which must be restricted to a buck with at least 1 unbranched antler) to allow more hunting opportunity while minimizing the risk of high-grading. As a result, the incidence of "spikes" in the harvest increased slightly as expected.

Many of the southeastern states have antler-point restrictions, where they protect they bottom end of the herd, and make the better quality yearlings vulnerable to harvest. For example, one state has a rule that protects all bucks that don't have at least 3 points on one antler. Therefore, the 6-point and 8-point yearlings are available for harvest, while the bucks with less antler potential (e.g., spikes) are protected. Another state has a 4-point rule, which protects all bucks with less than 4 points. These and other southeastern states are taking a hard look at their data, and questioning whether they should be continuing with such a harvest strategy. Most biologists agree that improving the age structure of a buck herd is beneficial; however, many southeastern biologists simply don't think that protecting only the poor-quality yearlings has been the best approach. We (TPWD) agree.

Will This Strategy Select For "Narrow-Rack" Bucks?

Some people interpret this as a strategy that will select for branched-antlered deer with less than a 13" spread. Well, it will - until those deer reach the age at which their spread exceeds 13". In other words, this strategy will select for better quality (i.e., branched antlered) young bucks, and will allow many of them to mature before they are available for harvest. It will eliminate the risk of high-grading, which is a likely outcome when many hunters choose to use their only buck tag on a 6-point or 8-point yearling instead of using it on a spike. Hunters are correct when they say there are some "narrow-rack" older bucks out there. They are also right when they say a portion of them will be protected under this strategy, which is not desirable. We don't claim that this strategy is flawless. We must be mindful of the long-term effects. This strategy will allow hunters to "turn-over" the population. Based on 34 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, they will reduce the incidence of those older "management bucks" that slip through the cracks. By the way, the incidence of mature bucks that would not be legal under this strategy is much lower than what one may expect. In most of the areas where we're considering such, less than 5% of the mature bucks would not be legal based on these criteria. But in those same areas, only 5% of the harvest consists of mature bucks!!! They simply aren't living that long.

Having carried the "high-grading" discussion this far, we must be very clear with one important point...This antler-restriction regulation is NOT a trophy-buck management strategy. Will it result in better quality deer? Possibly. It will result in more mature age-class bucks and age is one of the 3 main factors contributing to antler development. While this is not a trophy-buck management strategy, most hunters and landowners probably would agree that it would be irresponsible of TPW to propose a regulation that would have an adverse effect on antler quality. Protecting the bottom end of the herd (i.e., spikes and 3-pointers) would do just that. Therefore, we're considering a much more proactive approach to improve the age structure of the buck herd, while not compromising the quality of those bucks that reach maturity.

Won't the Second Buck in the Bag Result in an Over-Harvest of Bucks? HOW CAN YOU REDUCE HUNTING PRESSURE ON BUCKS BY ALLOWING AN ADDITIONAL BUCK TO BE HARVESTED?

The incidence of spike-antlered bucks is much lower than what many people think. Currently, 100% of the yearling bucks are vulnerable to harvest. This strategy is designed to protect 60-80% of the yearling bucks (depending primarily on the climatic conditions) in those areas - which happen to be the better quality yearlings.

Why Not Just Provide a Free "Spike Tag" - With no Spread Restriction?

Antler restrictions may be considered in some counties because landowners and hunters wanted an extra tag to help them better manage the herd. Based on years of population data and harvest data, we cannot justify giving a "free spike tag." Such a tag would have to come with stipulations to eliminate the risk of over-harvesting the buck segment of the population, as well as the risk of high-grading. So while some may think that the extra buck in the bag is a "ploy" to make antler restrictions more palatable, we are actually considering antler restrictions in some cases to make the extra tag feasible. We're simply trying to come up with a strategy that meets the needs and wishes of those managing the resource.

What About the Kids? Why Would You Want to Restrict Our Youth From Taking a Buck of Their Choice?

So far, all indications are that youth hunters are benefiting from this regulation. A comment that we routinely hear from the experimental counties is, "My kids are finally seeing bucks when we go hunting! We sat for years without seeing any buck, but now we see numerous bucks during our hunts." Other comments from those accustomed to seeing bucks - but young ones - include, "We're actually seeing rutting activity now! Improving the age structure of this buck herd is making our hunts much more enjoyable, because we're seeing activities that you just don't see when you have such a young buck population." In fact, 70% of survey respondents (in the 6-county experimental area) in the fall of 2004 said that they enjoy hunting more now than they did prior to the experimental antler-restriction regulation! Furthermore, data from our Big Game Harvest Surveys indicate no adverse effects to youth-hunting participation. TPW would not consider a regulation that was expected to have an adverse impact on youth hunters, and we will continue to closely monitor youth-hunting participation in an attempt to evaluate the effects of our regulations on youth hunters.

Shouldn't We Be Concerned About Inadequate Doe Harvest?

Hunters and landowners are right to assume that a buck-harvest regulation does not directly address the need for doe harvest in many areas of the state. We are addressing the concerns regarding more flexible doe-hunting opportunities with other proposals, some of which were adopted by the TPW Commission in April 2005. Some areas have deer populations expanding beyond the level of which that habitat can support, and we are addressing that problem. Other areas do not have a population that can withstand more liberal doe harvest. So we have to balance our population data, with our knowledge of habitat conditions, and with our goals of increasing hunter opportunity.

Conclusion
The content within this document describes an opportunity for Texas landowners and hunters. Feedback obtained from public scoping meetings, public-opinion surveys, and unsolicited public comments continue to indicate strong support for this antler-restriction regulation.

Some information within this document refers to 34 years of research, which has been designed to study the effects of genetics, age, and nutrition on a white-tailed deer population. The Kerr Wildlife Management Area has been conducting such research since 1974, and they make their data available to all. If you want to see these data, and discuss the research projects thoroughly with the scientists involved, please come to one of our range and wildlife management seminars at the Kerr Wildlife Management Area. To find out about meeting dates and times, please call the Kerr WMA at 830-238-4483.

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straight from TPWD I have to say I trust what they say

TPW has always quoted numbers in deer per 1000 acres for as long as I can remember.

In about 20 documents I have from them in the last year that's all I can find.

http://www.tpwd.state.tx.us/huntwild/wild/game_management/deer/antler_restrictions/

Here is the link to there page about it. There is no magic bullet to fix the issue in your hunting area

Really, you copied and pasted the whole TPWD infomercial on Antler Restrictions?

What in there contradicts anything I said or posted, that you must really believe them?

What I posted was directly from "2008 White-Tailed Deer Figures/Tables Summary" that I personally received from TPWD Big Game Program Director Mitch Lockwood. Since you think I am a liar, please contact and ask him for this very large pdf file, and get their data set that was used to compile it. Even I, the most skeptic statistician in the state, don't call him a liar. And it's his numbers, not mine.

Turkey, while I appreciate your efforts to educate me on the state's public position on Antler Restrictions, I will assure you that I have read that web page several times. I even questioned some TPWD officials on certain parts of it, as have others here. In fact, it's been edited and updated often.

Some of us have spent considerable time studying these matters. For some it's just something to argue about. For some it's a passion. But rest easy again, in that it's not something that I just dream up each night to throw out here each morning.

I have recently requested the newest version of this document or its successor. When I receive that I assure you I will dutifully report what it says, be it good or bad for Antler Restrictions.

I will say that I am finding deer pre 1000. When you deal with a biologist they list it at deer per sq mile. If you will dig deeper you will find that the hunter per 1000 is higher than any part of the state. This , land practice , and harvest pactices are what is at fault with the deer issue. The AR is not the issued. What looks like the cure to me is AR on bucks and old style doe permit. But make it where the biologist has to put foot on ground on the land to issue them, this way the permitts are based on good information. There needs to be a very controlled harvest in the piney woods , post oak area. The AR controls the bucks and the doe permit is the only way to control the doe harvest under the current hunter per 1000 issue.

If the numbers you posted are correct and you put them with the number of hunter per 1000 the TPWD list it is a scare situtation. 1 hunter pre 50 acre,s. So with 8 to 12 deer per 1000. That is around a deer per 100 or one deer for every 2 hunters. I am pro AR. That being said the AR that WORKS where I hunt will not work for texas east of I35. There are 7 regions listed for texas so TPWD need to manage each one different. Looks like every one needs to read all that is available INCLUDING the biologist making harvest regulations

There are 8 regions of management habitats in the state. turkeyfanatic, can you explain to me how before ARs these same ranches with the same amount of hunters had more deer than they have now with the same amount of hunters? Just curious since I just can not figure this one out.
The 8 regions:
Cross Timbers
High Plains/Panhandle
Hill Country
Oak Prairie
Pineywoods
Post Oak Savannah
South Texas Plains
Trans Pecos

I don't have the other numbers with me, as I have focused on and worked with these alot, so they are memorized fairly well.

RMU 18 is actually in the postoak savanah region not the piney woods.

THe whole table was posted here in the past, by me and others if you want to search for it.


The problem with their numbers, as noted in their own WMI Report from 04 or 05, is that they gather the numbers on a state or regional scale, then try to implement on a local level.
Same with the hunter density numbers, it may show 80 acres per hunter, but if only half the county they are referring to holds deer then that number increases. On the other hand, some of their hunter density numbers were not collected "species specific", so there may be duck or squirrel or dove guys listed as "hunters" so density is still a debateable topic as well.

There are not 2 hunters per 100 acres where we hunt. Nor are there 14-16 deer per 1000 acres either.

You are eactly right when you say that AR can work one place and not another...

There were 8 old eco-regions, with upper 20 or 30 ish number of Resource Management Units spread over those Eco Regions. This is something they are wanting to change as well.

They also purposely don't count deer in some areas, based on where the deer are located. For example there are countable numbers of deer in west central Fannin County, but that area is not assigned to any particular RMU.

Using artificial boundaries such as "north of highway 70" may not be the best thing for the animals, as they don't read those maps. Too often we have used man-made geo-boundaries to manage game as well. Case in point, there are three distinctly different terrain/soil composition areas of fannin county, and they offer/support different levels (if any) of whitetail deer and other game.

There is a lot to it other than "I want bigger horns". Heck, we all may want to be bigger. But in some cases the end doesn't justify the means. I wish TPWD had the resources to look globally, and manage locally.

To add here too if I may, these regions and their names and boundaries have varied over the course of the data collection as well. Some places that were in one region for part of the process "moved" to another later in the process. Usually for administrative reasons not scientific reasons. I believe this was pointed out in the WMI report as well (if not there it was from someone else not my original thought!)

From page 4...^^^

Turkey, there has been a lot of this (beat dead horse thingy) for sure. But there is also a lot of research, correspondence and questioning done on ARs with TPWD.

While your opinion are welcomed it might help to search ARs here on the old THF before calling out folks that get their FACTS straight from TPWD.

Might do a search on this site. You might gain some insite to what RMUs, WMIs, and might even learn what contiguous means. Just don't fall for all of the TPWD propaganda.

Oh and TPWD wrote the original web site for me and 6 of my co-anti-ARs friends back in 2005.

I would love to hear how your county should be set up! Do you think it should be old school if it has anything sticking out of its head and it is brown it is down? Because most of the guys that are agaist it were killing 1 1/2 spikes 6 and sometimes it had 8 points. I know a guy that hunted in east tx and he has a barn full of yearling racks. WHAT IS YOUR FIX ? To a problem that AR uncovered !

GOOD LORD!!! This thread is still going?

Curly, you are a trouble maker. Getting all this stirred up again.

I thought I had solved this issue about 15 pages ago....

What the heck is wrong with a barn full of small racks? Never killed a huge buck and will admit i have killed a bunch of small bucks but im not into fueling my ego to kill a monster buck. Turkeyfantic you and your speeches right out of the TPW handbook amaze me! you already stated you dont hunt in the countys that are having the problems so your opinion means squat when we are the ones trying to get it back the way it was and trust me it was MUCH better than it is now. I took a deer every year for close to 20yrs and will admit most were young deer but always saw plenty of deer at every sitting and occasionaly a good buck, now after 5yrs of new rules and bag limits ive taken no bucks and only 1 doe and was dang glad to get it! Unlike you and the rest of the pro ar guys i hunt for deer MEAT! sure i can buy beef and other meat but untill the make beef that tastes like venison im hunting deer. Way to many hunters hunt for the almighty antler wich thats ok with me, to each his own but im sick of people putting us down because i like to eat a young deer. And yes if its brown its down means i get to feed my family with something thats healthy and great eating and a pleasure to hunt then so be it! We had tons of deer before ar and now few after ar well personally its a no brainer! ARsucks!

Those pro-AR guys can type 200 paragraph posts all they want...until something improves in my area, I'm still gonna hate ARs.

200 paragraphs????? Was that a crack aimed at me bro? LOL!

There may be places AR's are the greatest thing on earth. As I have said often I think they will help in ARCHER and I'd LOVE to have them in FOARD!

But in the 4-5 counties around home, they suck.

I ask what do think TPWD needs to do as for as regulation. There are no free lunches. You pay now or later. What is the hunting like next to the national forest land??? Is there anyone that has land next to it ??

Nope not you...maybe to the one who's a fan of turkeys but apparently is an expert on deer.

Turkeyfanatic, one thing you need to ask yourself is why you hunt. Do you hunt for horn or meat? There is nothing wrong with either, but understanding the other side is important.


Deer numbers are quoted per 1000 acres in the TPWD. Most other states and most private biologist still use sq. mile. You may be pro restriction, but Sig is anti and he has done his homework and probably is known by name in Austin. I do not doubt his word one bit.

I control what is killed on my land and deer numbers are down. I am not young or foolish. I know what I speak of and what I have witnessed on my land over the last 30 years or so. We need to take the bag limit down. I have heard there are going to be some changes made. The AR's have not worked in NE TX.

19 pages

Awe come one, surly you got more to say than .

Well Ok if you put it that way..

Yeah and he is an expert on blanket managing land via the internet that he has never set foot onkinda like the TPW and their blanket mangement AR plan.

and

Did you get so excited that your forgot to type your reply in? or you just trying to get to that 10,000 mark in a hurry and got to excited?

Nah...think I'll just milk it till 10,000.

You gonna have to keep this thread open and not get it locked then so you can make that 10,000th post on an AR then!

As long as opposing folks don't get belligerent I will. If it does get locked down, I'll just start a new one.

Oh guys I know that the management of east tx is going to be alot diffenent than the areas I hunt, but due to lower deer numbers if the bucks get protection. That area has to protectional to produce bigger deer than south texas if the genes or there. But I understand wanting more deer. To make change you must be heard and you must have a educated arguement

This is gonna get really good calling the guys arguements to the TPW "uneducated arguements".

Well going back to the way it was will not happen, so know what will get the results that the majority of hunters in your area will agree on

Antler Restrictions worked on my place. Hardly any deer were sporting them...

It's pretty obvious the AR's work since the program has been expanded over the years and not one county has been taken off of the restrictions.

That can only mean one thing, and that it's an overall success or TPWD would be catching so much heat they would do away with it instead of expanding.

Sure there are those who complain and have legit reasons to complain, because there are areas that have more problems than AR's can fix, but the fact remains until TPWD agrees with those in the minority who complain, it will continue to expand.