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Antler restrictions
- Thread starter satchmo
- Start date
Not my deer....they don't get large enough to make my wall.
I understand. Well he got big enough to get invited to my cook out. That's what it's about to my family. We hunt to eat. The deer we mount are for the memories to us.
Not about the county record.
Best of luck hunting this season.
shdw633
Senior Member
Best of luck to you this hunting season as well. Hope you get a biggun!!!
I didn't kill a buck last year. Saw several. One nice one walked to me. Maybe I'll get to watch him again this year. He has a nice home. White acorn trees in a creek bottom surrounded by pine thickets.
satchmo
Moderator
My original post was just an observation. Antler restrictions are just an easy way to generally make a better herd. A way to make the general population of deer hunters deer managers. The number of points is not any way to age a deer at all. A spike can be 5 and an eight point can be 2. Same as the spread. However ,the chances are better that the wider the spread and a buck being an 8 point or better would lean toward the buck being a few years old rather than 1.5 with five inch spikes. A one buck limit with a liberal doe harvest works in a lot of states. Our two buck limit and liberal doe harvest here in Ga is working great. If a club make a trophy fee on bucks ( in the form of having to mount the deer ) that is defiantly an incentive to hold out for a better buck. But I sure didn't mean for this thread to be a contest on what deer is harder to harvest by what method. Everybody is different, every deer is different. We really don't need to ever, ever put somebody's deer down. If you want to post your personal pictures of any deer you harvested with a longbow or recurve please do so before you talk about how simple it is. I can't see knocking anybody for any method they use. It's all a preference .
Don't get me started. I think the world would be a lot better off if less high-and-mighty deer hunters would quit worrying about what everybody else shoots or tries to impose their idea of enjoyment or "a better deer herd." I don't tell anybody else what to shoot, so don't try to force me to hunt your way by impsoing restrictions. In my opinion, antler restrictions, trophy hunting, and letting all the little bucks walk while slaughtering the does wholesale has almost ruined deer hunting in many areas. It ain't all about the horns to everybody.
I think SC is the only state left that hasn't lost its durn mind and succumbed to the trophy buck law disease. That's why the hunting is still good there. Where my place is in SC, it's a five-buck limit with lots of doe restrictions. I still see more bucks and big hoss bucks there than I ever have anywhere in my two-buck-limit-shoot-all-the-does home state.
I think SC is the only state left that hasn't lost its durn mind and succumbed to the trophy buck law disease. That's why the hunting is still good there. Where my place is in SC, it's a five-buck limit with lots of doe restrictions. I still see more bucks and big hoss bucks there than I ever have anywhere in my two-buck-limit-shoot-all-the-does home state.
I seen this thing turn the corner. 
Throwback
Chief Big Taw
How did deer even survive before people started "managing" them ??
satchmo
Moderator
Quality deer management.
I don't think anyone on here is being high and mighty at all. It's all just a preference. In Georgia, we have never had better deer hunting ever. The overall heard is great, the population is huge and everybody is happy. The people that want meat, and the people that want antlers have it all here. Georgia could be the poster child for quality deer management. The liberal limit gives every club the opportunity to manage their property the way they see fit. The state puts restrictions in place to make the hunting population deer managers as best they can. The way it was headed with two bucks any size we wouldn't have the number of record book bucks we do now and it gets more and more every year. There's a pretty big difference in quality deer management and trophy deer management. Bucks are pretty easy to take during the rut ,and without protection in some way every spike and six point that walked out would be fair game. My original post was only showing that the antler restrictions are not 100% great for every situation. I can't tell the difference from the way a buck taste than a doe if it's hung in a cooler for two weeks. I'd rather let smaller bucks slide and shoot a doe if I want venison. I really didn't mean for this thread to be a contest at all because it's not. We all hunt, we all have different views and we all have different goals. No one comes up from Florida because they need meat. I don't go to Ky to shoot a spike or a doe either. I go because I like to deer hunt and I really enjoy taking a big buck. I don't think ive met many deer hunters that don't enjoy taking a nice buck. That's all that antler regs do. More birthdays= bigger bucks. If somebody doesn't like that , they can go somewhere else other than Georgia. Or they can shoot their spike and load their truck down with does and go home if they can't, or won't wait for their second buck of whatever restriction there is to show up. It will never matter to me. I am happy for everybody that takes any deer that makes them happy,with whatever they want to shoot one with.
I don't think anyone on here is being high and mighty at all. It's all just a preference. In Georgia, we have never had better deer hunting ever. The overall heard is great, the population is huge and everybody is happy. The people that want meat, and the people that want antlers have it all here. Georgia could be the poster child for quality deer management. The liberal limit gives every club the opportunity to manage their property the way they see fit. The state puts restrictions in place to make the hunting population deer managers as best they can. The way it was headed with two bucks any size we wouldn't have the number of record book bucks we do now and it gets more and more every year. There's a pretty big difference in quality deer management and trophy deer management. Bucks are pretty easy to take during the rut ,and without protection in some way every spike and six point that walked out would be fair game. My original post was only showing that the antler restrictions are not 100% great for every situation. I can't tell the difference from the way a buck taste than a doe if it's hung in a cooler for two weeks. I'd rather let smaller bucks slide and shoot a doe if I want venison. I really didn't mean for this thread to be a contest at all because it's not. We all hunt, we all have different views and we all have different goals. No one comes up from Florida because they need meat. I don't go to Ky to shoot a spike or a doe either. I go because I like to deer hunt and I really enjoy taking a big buck. I don't think ive met many deer hunters that don't enjoy taking a nice buck. That's all that antler regs do. More birthdays= bigger bucks. If somebody doesn't like that , they can go somewhere else other than Georgia. Or they can shoot their spike and load their truck down with does and go home if they can't, or won't wait for their second buck of whatever restriction there is to show up. It will never matter to me. I am happy for everybody that takes any deer that makes them happy,with whatever they want to shoot one with.
I agree with a lot of that. I don't have a thing against you or anybody else trophy hunting. What I do have a thing against is someone trying to force me to be a trophy hunter against my will because that's their thing. I have no desire to ever mount another deer head in my life, but I intend to deer hunt until I die. What I hunt and shoot on my own land is my business, I don't need the trophy club next door or the DNR to tell me how many years old or how big of antlers my deer needs to have before I decide to shoot it.
I think that all antler restrictions often do is kill off a lot of basket-racked young 8 pointers with potential to become "trophy" deer, while leaving the big mature six-pointers, or the seven-point scrub or old cowhorn to live its life out in safety. If you are my neighbor and you trophy hunt, be glad I shoot the two-year-old spike for meat instead of the two-year-old eight pointer. And if I don't overshoot all my does like the QDM folks, you're welcome for the buck fawns that move onto your place next year.
The bottom line is this - WRD manages the deer heard in this state to maximize the population to the carrying capacity of the habitat as well as to provide something for everybody.
From there it's up to you to manage your local resource. Before picking up your bow or shouldering your gun the first question you should ask yourself is If I kill this deer what impact will it have on the resource? If you don't know the answer or if killing the deer will have a negative effect you shouldn't kill the deer. The rest is a matter of personal preference.
From there it's up to you to manage your local resource. Before picking up your bow or shouldering your gun the first question you should ask yourself is If I kill this deer what impact will it have on the resource? If you don't know the answer or if killing the deer will have a negative effect you shouldn't kill the deer. The rest is a matter of personal preference.
Where I grew up (southern Mississippi), in the early 1900s folks had killed off the deer. My grandfather told us of when there were no deer to be seen at all and that if you said you'd seen deer tracks, people would laugh at you as if you told them you saw a black panther or Bigfoot, today. In the '50s, I believe he said, they shipped in a bunch of deer from up north somewhere and repopulated the herd. My grandfather ran a store that was near one of the main national forest entrances and he said he saw 18 wheeler cattle haulers full of deer... the drivers would stop at his store and buy drinks/food and they'd all go out to look. For many years after repopulation, there was still no hunting season. My dad remembered when the first deer season was permitted.
Some of the folks who say "I should be able to do what I want to do" is fine if they were the only hunter (or one of the few) in the woods. The fact is that we have hundreds of thousands of hunters in the woods all sharing the same resource... the deer herd. It's a classic case of the Tragedy of the Commons. If folks did what they wanted, then they'd kill every deer they saw because of some reason like (and I've actually heard this myself) "someone else will kill the deer if they saw it so why shouldn't I kill it for my own freezer".
That kind of attitude leads to not having any deer for anyone to shoot. So the herd needs to be managed and the majority (there will always be those special snowflakes who think that they should be allowed to be different) help manage the herd so that hopefully folks a few generations from now might have deer to hunt. Of course, that ignores urban/suburban sprawl and population growth, etc.
Throwback
Chief Big Taw
Goodness
furtaker
Senior Member
Personally, I would love to see those limits and restrictions in Georgia. I doubt it will ever happen though.
I agree. Antler restrictions have absolutely nothing to do with that, though. Killing off all the does is how you get rid of a deer herd, not killing non-trophy bucks. It matters not a whit to the deer herd whether you kill a buck when he's a button head or a ten-point booner. It's the exact same difference in the long run. Those five does you killed for the freezer while letting all the bucks walk, however, can have a big impact on the local deer herd.
I can remember when we didn`t have a deer season here in my part of Georgia. You`ll never hear me fuss and gripe about our deer season because I know what it`s like not to have one at all. We have it made now, but many don`t realize it.
It's all about hunter responsibility, not the law. The law was broken in the last three hunting clubs where I was a member. (hopefully my new club is the real deal this time)
People on their own need to make wise decisions about managing deer. Quality deer practices have been in place on some clubs long before the law placed antler restrictions in place.
People on their own need to make wise decisions about managing deer. Quality deer practices have been in place on some clubs long before the law placed antler restrictions in place.
Gbr5pb
Senior Member
As long as you hunting legal none of my business what you do!
I think Quitman Co. Was around 1979 for the 1st deer season. SWGA.
