Deer Hunting

Like many of you, I enjoy whitetail deer hunting, although I haven't shot one in several years. Yeah, I'm on a lease and other members kill deer, but I'm the newest member of a very old lease and my hunting area is (currently) the least desirable, because five years ago that piece of timber was clear-cut. This will be the fourth year that I've been on this particular lease, and hope springs eternal. We've got about 100 days to the start of the season, and come late August or early September, I'll be starting to prepare the deer stands for another year's hunt.

The grandkids are already asking when we're going to the lease. With three or four young'uns on my Mule, we look like a gypsy caravan running through the woods. It's very cool being a PawPaw to young boys.

The reason I bring this up is that Phil Bourjaily, over at Field and Stream talks about trophy management.

The bad part is, whitetails have antlers. It wouldn’t be a problem if all their antlers were the same size, but they’re not. The fixation on big antlers and the amount of money people will pay to lock up land for trophy deer hunting is one of the most troubling trends in hunting. Unlike farmers, who may let you on their property, the new deer hunter-landowner won’t let you on at any time of the year for fear of scaring the trophies. It’s an accepted part of trophy deer management that you create sanctuaries where no human ever sets foot. All this because of antlers, which, I might point out here, are inedible unless you are a gnawing rodent.

I agree, to a point. That point would be when a nice 10-point buck walked out near my stand. However, for the most part, I don't give a darn about the quality of the antlers, although I am worried about the quality of the genetics in our herd.

Someone once told me that a spike buck has defective genes and will probably continue to be a spike for his entire life. That same wildlife biologist told me that a yearling whitetail deer will be a small four-point. Since then, my policy has been to harvest spike bucks when I can, to take that deer out of the gene pool.

Let me know if I got the story wrong.