Please select on option for the harvest restrictions on your lease.

On ours, as long as it's legal, it's your choice to shoot or not.

Lease has only the restrictions in the law for lease members. There is nothing regarding age or size. Quantity is the only exception/variation, In our charter the owner has restricted the number. A leaseholder may have a guest hunter, but anything the guest shoots reduces the lease member's number & type of deer.

For example, the regulations for our county allow two "anterless" during the first 16 days of the season, one legal buck with inside spread of 13" or greater and one legal "unbranched" antler buck (commonly called spike). So, since the doe-season is over and I already shot a 10-point with inside spread over 13", the only deer I (or a guest) can still shoot is a "spike". That does reduce the total kill for the lease... otherwise, I could have guests/family and they could all legally kill more deer but it would break the only real rule of the lease. The total number of deer I COULD have killed this year would be 2 doe, 1 13"+ and 1 spike. Anything a guest kills reduces that number on the lease (I can still go to some other county to hunt until I've used up my tags-- within the law).

1st year on our lease. Owner is extremely conservative and we are too for the most part. We want to build this place into something.

On my last lease, we had to shoot a doe or spike before we could shoot a mature buck. If you didn't get your mature buck, last year's doe or spike counted. We thought that would work great, until we found out the owner was day leasing our blinds on "ranch" days that we weren't allowed to come out. We put a ton of work in that place and we all left in discust after a very loud confrontation with the owner. I haven't leased since. I hunt public land only now and will never go back.
Last I heard, the place was shot out and now he just runs cattle.

We self police....general agreement on no does, mature bucks only, cull bucks for kids, all the pigs we can shoot, etc......

I know many landowners and leasers. I don't know any that don't have guidelines in place to protect their investment. Land investment and lease investment.

Of course there are many different management methods, but virtually everybody is trying to manage toward some goal.

I think the harvest guidelines should be specific to the property. A deer census needs to be done first. It does not have to be expensive or complicated. Most of it can be done by observing the game on the ranch. Such as: the buck/doe ratio, age of the bucks, number of deer, etc. Then a plan can be made. If the ranch has a deer population that can be maintained with the habitat, there is nothing wrong with taking what the law allows. Too many rules can really take the fun out of hunting.

Just follow game laws.

We have very strict rules on the kind of deer we take. Our choice. Not LOs

Follow game laws. We are overpopulated and have too many culls. The main lease rule is if you are hunting someone elses stand you better make sure it meets the mature and size requirements if it is a buck with more than 8 antlers.

Our rules from the wife's grandma: obey the law

The only iron-clad rule that I have is that my protein stations are sanctuaries. No hunting over them. Same for close to my house but my dogs probably would turn that into a wreck.

Most of my hunting group has been with me for years and we have a joint goal of improving the lease. I do my part as owner and they do their part attempting to manage the herd. Over the years we have only a couple of hunters that did not fit the program and their names magically disappeared from the hunting list that I was provided at the beginning of the next season. Lease rules developed by my hunters and the associated peer pressure accomplish more than anything I could impose. I am extremely lucky to have a group of guys interested in what the hunting will be like from their blind 3 to 4 years from now.

If I had to be a personal hands-on rule manager, I would either stop leasing or drastically increase my fees. Time is money plus it would not be as much fun.

TTT

I put significant restrictions, but we own the property, its not a lease. All the family that hunts it abides by the restrictions though.