It's not about protecting potential TROPHIES as you say, but, if everyone can shoot any buck, then how is it possible for those bucks to gain any age or growth whether it is for body size or antler size...they can't. Especially with the increase of small acreage tracts 1 acre to 15 and 20 acres tracts plots with a house on each.

That is probably true and also in the South Texas Plains ecological region, however, the antler restrictions may be headed that way also...it hit Atascosa County and a few of the counties such as Brown, Mills, etc. and those have high buck numbers as well as deer density too.

What is amusing with all these AR threads are those who keep saying and blaming the AR's because they are seeing fewer or no deer.

How is it that not shooting a young buck and letting him walk is going to cause you to see no, or fewer deer?

Like I've said before on other threads if you are seeing fewer and or no deer, you have a more serious problem than AR's.

Deer are not migratory and new deer don't just fly in to take over the range that has been vacated. They grow up and live within a one mile radius for their entire lives and if you hunt them hard and shoot the young deer you will have few deer.
Look at the range conditions, over harvesting does just because you have a permit, predation or poaching, and just lack of respect for the regulations as to the cause of fewer deer.

BTW, the older the deer gets the smarter they are, and why they get big, so that may be another reason with more deer that are older.

wow kind of split. I wonder if TPWD took a poll on hunters in the area like it has done recently in other matters of change???

In Hamilton County they worked, in numbers, age class and deer size. That's body and antlers. This is the first year in Young county and we will see how it works here. Jimbo is right though, if you are seeing fewer deer it is because you are killing too many does. Just because you have a tag is not a reason to use it.

I know what TP&W is trying to accomplish and all, but is it me or is THIS GREAT COUNTRY OF OURS stripping US of our freedom piece by piece. Not just here, everywhere..........THINK ABOUT IT! RULES, LAWS, More rules, More laws.... I guess I was just born 100 years too late!!!!!!!!!!!

Considering the size of the counties, how can a person on one place of say a square mile, 640 acres really tell what is happening in the county? I see some people saying yes and some saying no about how it is working. Seems to me that everyone is only concerned about their own little world and not seeing the entire picture.

How many of the naysayers are biologists? How many of the people that are for it are biologists? My guess is less than 1/10 of 1 percent. This is like taking the advice of an outhouse lawyer when you are on trial for your life.

Good post,

AS far as AR's go, the outhouse crew won.

I'm excited about getting them in Newton Co. All of the mature deer I have seen come into my camp have been legal under the AR guidelines, but I also see too many young bucks taken in Newton Co.

im glad to see them in montague county. unfortunately this will be my last year to hunt there.

i beleive ar's are awsome although since then i have seen just a handful of legal bucks and killed none of them because they were to young for me. i know some of you ar mad because of the restrictions but we still have it pretty good here in texas just take a look at other states seasons length wise and weapon choices and tag drawings weve still got it good just have to get out there and hunt and off of the comp

A big reason for the AR is to also create a better hunting experience (seeing more deer) for deer hunters in the higher pressured areas of texas. There have always been several hunter satisfaction surveys and feelers put out by TPW, and in the 1990's that satisfaction dropped significantly, predominantly in the areas with higher population density. There were just too many hunters who didn't have the restraint to do what biologist were encouraging us to do, for fear their neighbor would shoot those young bucks if they didn't.

This argument is . If you just wanted to kill what you want when you wanted to and we didn't have any regulatory controls we wouldn't have the game we have today. There have always been regulations. Limits on does, limits on hen ducks or pheasants. These are in place to manipulate the populations for given reasons and usually these decisions are made by biologists who know more about it then I do.

But I want to keep 10 inch speckled trout and redfish! That dadgum gubermint is takin my writes away!

From the last few posts you sound like younger guys. I can remember back when hunting was real hunting. Doe permits were maybe 1 per 250 acres, if you saw a deer on a weekend it was a great weekend to be hunting. If you had a place where you saw a half dozen deer during the season you had heaven on earth.

That was accomplished by the TP&W and their rules and regulations. Today a lot of counties have deer hunting that did not see any deer in the 1960s or even the early 1970's. In Runnels county one was lucky to see a deer in the 1960's, today it is a 5 deer county, Taylor county was a one buck county and does were by permit only, one permit for about 500 acres. Today I believe Taylor county is a 5 deer county.

Was this accomplished by the hunters, the land owners or TP&W? It was accomplished by the landowners and the TP&W with the hunters only starting to help in the 1980's. Deer management takes TIME, it is not a clock that can be sped up to satisfy a part of the hunters.

From the above posts, AR is working, and not working. If it is working in part of a county and not in the other half of the county maybe the AR system needs to be revised. But I can imagine that would lead to more rules and regulations and a lot more bitchin. Or maybe the part of the county where it is not working may be over hunting the area. It might be that the land is over developed into to many small tracts, and over populated with people. Maybe TP&W needs to move the people back to the cities, but then there would be more complaining.

There is no way to please all of the people all of the time. the system cannot even please half of the people half of the time. There has to be a balance, and from the above posts it seems that the human population is part of the problem and the hunters will have to learn to deal with it.

Why is it so hard to believe that we are seeing fewer deer every year? When ar rules came into effect they went from 1 buck to 2 bucks and 2 does! That means 4 deer as compared to 1 buck or 1 buck and a doe if you are a archery hunter. To some off the people on here that cant do the math, thats at least double the harvest of deer than before ar rules. Also for you guys that say ar rules and harvest take aint the same, they came from the same place [tpw] and the same time and are hand in hand! If tpw would lower the deer limit down to 1 buck and 1 doe archery or gun thyen you will never hear another gripe from me about ar rules. All for seeing bigger bucks, but its not gonna happen by doubling the limit on deer in hopkins co.

Sounds like those who hunt in Hopkins county need to call TPWD on the carpet and get some answers as I agree it makes no sense, but to say AR's don't work and paint them with a broad brush is just not fair either.

Our county has been a one buck no does county for years, and with the AR's they changed to 2 bucks, one 13" or better and a spike, but still no does unless it's MLD, and it's made a vast difference, so AR's don't automatically mean you can kill statewide four deer. It's done by what TPWD feels the county can stand to take.

Put simply in my experiece the AR's work when the regulations that were in place before weren't.

Those who have issues with killing too many deer, should in my opinion try to work it out with TPWD, the sooner the better.

There is no way to please all of the people all of the time. the system cannot even please half of the people half of the time. There has to be a balance, and from the above posts it seems that the human population is part of the problem and the hunters will have to learn to deal with it.[/quote]

I think you are probably on to something here. It makes perfect sense to let the young (less than 13" deer) walk and shoot only does, culls, and mature bucks. If youngsters are taught to hunt this way, the hunting experience should be preserved for a lot of years to come. Ar's can only improve the quality of the deer herd. There may need to be some county specific tweaking to the current set of standards, but it should be a good start. Another thing we should do as hunters is try to kill any hog that you see. This may be the biggest problem facing the herd in the future.

It kind of proves that hunters can't control themselves and NEED to have regulations placed on them.

Everyone gripes about the regulations allowing too many deer to be harvested, but yet they take advantage of the tags just because they can, and then turn right around and criticize TPWD because they allow too many deer to be shot in their county.

Hunters have to be responsible and only take the number of deer their property can sustain.

That is the reason TPWD got into the AR's in the first place because people would not let the young deer grow, and get age on them, and now they are letting the under 13" bucks walk but are shooting too many does.

Funny how that works!

No! The AR's SUCK!

It stinks to have 7 pt bucks that are 4-5 years old that you can't shoot because of spread.

And the 7 point is going to breed and spread those genes all over the place and make more deer. Way to go!

a 7pt less than 13" is not worth feeding unless he has 18" tines

So what is your solution? Get rid of AR and let the deer be shot as before? The problem with that is a lot and I mean a lot of hunters do not care nor even know about aging or what a cull is. All they want to do is shoot a deer and don't care if it has antlers or not.

To make it legal to shoot what some consider a cull under the AR system would be a legal and technical nightmare. The TP&W annual booklet would be the size of a set of encyclopedias. There is no one rule that fits all, it is multiple rules and so far I haven't seen anyone or any group come up with a better answer that what TP&W has.

Hunters cannot judge whether AR is working or not working on one place of 640 acres or even 2000 acres, and from the posts on this and other AR threads that is what is being done. That is like looking at a town and seeing just the slum and saying the entire town is a POS, or looking at the country club area and saying this town is like a country club.

I would vote to let things be as they were before. If ARs are working then the place wasn't being managed right before hand. IF we followed ARs we would be shooting a whole lot of 2.5yr olds that are still dumb enough to set up camp under a feeder almost everytime they go off. And allowing a yearling spike to get killed seriously defeats the intentions of allowing young bucks to walk.

In the counties that are AR, how many places are large enough to really manage the deer population? How many places are in the 1500 plus acres range? Or are the places smaller, in the 300 acre to 500 acres? There is no way to manage a deer herd on small places unless everyone in the area is part of the herd management program. The chance of that being a 100 percent reality is slim, very slim.

The yearly buck example is an example of poor herd management, that reverts to letting everyone shoot as they please. Do you think you could convince the person that shoots a yearling spike to care about age, culls or anything else but meat in the freezer? Not without educating them, and that is part of the process of the AR rules.