I also hunt in an AR county, the way I interpret spike is: both are slick, one is slick and the other could have ten tines. But if both have ANY branch then it isn't a spike, its a four point or whatever is branched. Now that just my way of reading from the handbook pictures.

This buck is actually 2.5. We are struggling with our deer herd because we don't have disciplined management rules and we have a growing number of bucks with these narrow antlers. Below are a couple of pics of yearlings with these antlers. We are not shooting the 1.5 year old spikes although we believe we can tell the ones with the bad antler gene - the deer themselves seem a little smaller and the antlers are thinner.

A "spike buck deer" is a buck with no antler having more than one point.
Definition of a point: A point is a projection that extends at least one inch from the edge of a main beam or another tine. The tip of the main beam is also a point.
The above per TPWD outdoor annual.

Antler restrictions = at least one unbranched antler buck could be a spike as defined above or could have 2 ~ 150 points on one side as long as the other side has only one point.
Or have an inside width between the main beams of 13" or more.

During the anterless & spike buck late season a buck must be an actual spike, no antler having more than one point.

AR's suck.

ARs suck for responsible hunters, who can accurately age deer, & want to manage their herd. That covers about a dozen hunters in Texas.

Most hunters want to shoot something, anything, & they shoot the first thing they see. So we get ARs, so at least not every young buck gets shot every year.

Would I rather have no ARs & responsible hunters, of course. But let's face it, most deer hunters don't give a [censored] about aging deer, managing & improving their herd, & passing on young bucks. They care about shooting something, "filling their freezer", shooting all the deerthey can, then finding another lease when they shoot out their current lease.

ARs ain't nowhere near perfect, but we have a pretty low common denominator in dealing with many "hunters".

preach on preacher man!

I bet a poll would show at least 75% in favor and add another 10 to that for the guys that don't want to publicly admit it...they'll come around though.

are they perfect? no, but they are better than not having anything.

lol

If that's a 2.5 year old you have pigmy's breeding your does.

The pic of the deer in the original post is 2.5. The pics in this post you responded to are 1.5. Though I am not sure the relevance of your comments as to whether or not this is a legal spike. I know the one I asked a question about is 2.5 because of a identical scar on his side from pics I have of him from last season.

Do you have pics of the original buck from last year and this year with the scar to show his age better. I am not seeing a two yr old buck in that first pic.

We have much bigger issues on our lease, part of which makes this all irrelevant anyway. But suffice it to say that there are deer on our property who have a peculiar enough antler characteristics that we have been able to watch them over the 6 years we have been on the lease. None of them, even at 5.5 are even close to being legal.

That all said, this lease is a lost cause because we refuse to manage it. The reason for the proliferation of these particular characteristics is because we have too many hunters on 900 acres and we shoot too many young bucks each year.

My question about whether or not this was a spike was more due to my confusion over the regulations. On most of our bucks like the one in my original post, they do have one completely smooth antler so they are still clearly legal spikes at 2.5 and sometimes 3.5. This one didn't.

With all due respect, I am not going to go back through pics just to see if I can find one of him at 1.5 and 2.5 at a similar angle. Especially when it is not even germane to what I was seeking feedback on.

I bow hunt the entire deer season and between the hours I spend watching these deer at 15-20 yards and poring over trail cam pics, I get pretty familiar with the deer out there. I won't argue whether it is 2.5 or not. I just know he is a year older than he was last year.

"That all said, this lease is a lost cause because we refuse to manage it. The reason for the proliferation of these particular characteristics is because we have too many hunters on 900 acres and we shoot too many young bucks each year. "

Interesting. Mind if I ask a few questions?

How many hunters do y'all have? How many young bucks, big bucks, & doe do y'all take? What's the general area?

We have 10 hunters on 900 acres - which we originally thought was closer to 1300 acres. So that is 20 stands/feeders or 1 per 45 acres.

I went through ten thousand plus pics last year from the lease and with a little input from others, identified between 22-25 individual bucks. We figured maybe 5-8 more bucks that were never captured on camera. So 30 bucks. From TPWD and other sources, I got that land in our area should support 100-110 deer per 1000 acres.

We have does out the ying yang - so if we have the average that would put us at 30 bucks and 70-80 does - at least 2 does per buck.

Of the bucks on camera, 5 were no brainer legal bucks obviously outside the ears only 2 of them were older than 3.5. Unfortunately, we took both of them as well as 2 of the 3.5 year olds.

Overall, we took 11 bucks and 14 does, similar to the prior year.

We took 6 non-yearling spikes but also left a few. I took an illegal 8 pointer mercy kill of a 3.5 year old buck that had lost its entire lower jaw and could not eat. One hunter's son shot a promising 2.5 year old 8 pointer.

If you look at what we are depending upon to breed each season, well more than than half are not even legal bucks (outside the ears) even at 4.5 years and older. And over the past 2 years, it seems like the number of spikes has doubled if not more.

It is beautiful, rugged land with no county roads or highways bordering the land. We have a high fence on one side along with another lease property we know little about. The rest of the land is surrounded by the rancher's land and it is not hunted regularly except maybe by his family members. There are 3 ponds that have never gone dry and a couple of others that usually have water. There are cattle out there.

Have you done a survey? If so, is there a management plan in place? Spikes tend to show up more on un-managed place and places that are over-populated. If you have not done a survey, that will show what your ratios are and densities are. Taking does in many cases can increase fawns crops. Holding back on buck harvests from 2 bucks per hunter to one per season for a couple of years could benefit you. Cutting back from 10 hunters down to 4-5 would be very beneficial, but not always doable with the guys being on the lease the longest.

Im with texan1970

Thanks for the info OP. I'm just fascinated by the human dynamics involved in deer leases.

Have y'all always had that many hunters there? Is there anyone "in charge", a lease manager?

Land supporting 100 deer on 1,000 acres sounds like way too much. That's a deer every 10 acres. If your area was hit by the drought, I would think it'd be way less than that.

I agree with stxranchman. 4-5 hunters would work. I would think that at 4-5 hunters, & 1 stand each, the deer would be far more concentrated. That would be 1/4 the stands y'all currently have.

I personally don't like hunters having more than 1 stand. I think that waters down where the deer can go. You can only sit at 1 place at a time.

I think the AR can be good and bad. I hunt private land bordering the lbj grasslands. I have several 2.5+ year 4 points that are 8-10 inches wide.

I believe in the A. R. rule. Have managed my small area in Northeast Texas for many yrs. with thousands of pictures. Managed in conjunction with TPWD/biologist etc. I can say from start of AR rule until today there is a major improvement in the buck herds because of this rule. I'm a big fan of the Noble Foundation Wildlife biologist research which encompasses not only Oklahoma but our area along the red river. They back up their research with hard scientific facts. Normally have a yearly meeting somewhere in our vicinity and is well worth the effort to attend and for the barb q cue!!
Attached is the most recent AG news letter article from Mike Porter about spikes which filters into the AR discussion. Agree or disagree, like or not like, his and other biologist research is a voice hard to ignore.
See this Nov letter via attachment. Look at his other writings as well, Ken Gee was another biologist who did enormous amount of research with Noble the last 25 yrs.
http://www.noble.org/staff/porter-michael/

I have been equally fascinated and frustrated by the human dynamics on this lease - which is why I joined a second lease this season.

There is a lease manager who acts like he doesn't really want to be lease manager - he doesn't want to impose any rules because he knows some of the guys either disagree or could not afford it - like protein feeding for example. From his perspective, we are free to propose any rules we want but it seldom happens. In part because the majority of hunters on the lease also work for him or have in the past and still do business with him. So they are reluctant to push for anything.

Another aspect is that the rancher gives us full access to the property year round and is a very good guy. He likes having us out there and a lot of guys use the property throughout the year. Most of these guys have also shot their fair share of deer and don't really care if they get an opportunity for a big buck as long as their kids get a shot at something.

It is just this year - after 6 seasons on the property, where there is now a consensus that the hunting quality has significantly declined. There were a lot more spikes last year than ever before and there are even more this year.

Yes, there have always been 10 hunters. The rancher has plenty of land (not hunted or leased) and we tried to get more land this season to increase the number of acres per hunter to at least 150. But he wanted too much money and we did not want to pay anything. But even though 10 is too many no matter what, most of the guys do not take a trophy buck each season. There have been seasons where we have only 5 or 6 bucks total, including spikes. But we also don't take all our does so we have not even put a dent in the doe to buck ratio.

I had the GW at my place a couple of weeks ago to talk about a poacher issue. I asked what to do about a couple of older bucks with with very large high antlers that will never make AR's. He recommended that I get an MLD permit. I'm looking into it but am still starting the research phase.