You have your own world that does not match 90 percent of the people world on this board... which isn't a bad thing

everyone has there own managment program... differance is you know your herd in side and out, including numbers, ratio, carrying capacity ect... So if you want to take a gamble your at least taking a very educated gamble..which is what managment truely is an educated gamble.

Can you say that 90 percent of the people on this board are equipped with the same herd info and herd history that you have on the stuff you manage??? Understand where I'm going with this?

BOBO here one of my previous posts. Do you agree with what I say in it?

"It depends on your management goals. HF or LF, large or small ranch? How many yearlings do you have? Do all the yearling look like this? For me I would cull him since bucks with less than 6 points as a yearling average only 20% of the age class for me over the last 3 yrs. If you want more just like him keep him if not then cull him. But without knowing your ranch or your goals hard for anyone to make a blanket call on your ranch only seeing one deer."

i would let him walk, he's just a baby.


in some years if i would have shot every yearling spike or forkhorn i would't have had a 2 year old buck the next year.

Yelp... very much so

You and I both know that the science behind culling 2.5 or younger deer... gets equal support for it works and it doesn't work, there is success for people found on both sides of that agruement. That why I said management is an educated gamble. I will always error on the caution side because we have such light deer denisty we can't take that chance, nor do I beleive that any one can look at a yearling or 1.5 year old buck and come remotely close to what he will be at fully mature. If I got into a deer density issue I would work the doe numbers side then my bucks age groups but never any thing under 3.5

We would not shoot this deer on our place. There are too many factors to consider. What if this guy was bred in the secondary rut, and is 2 months behind the rest of the herd? His antlers may not come around for a while. In the long run, culling deer like this honestly wouldn't matter much, as it isn't high grading, but we would still let it go.

That is what they call site-specific management.

Justin by the same token if he was born in the first week of May in a great year and this is all he could grow would you feel the same way?

#1 it is population managemnt. If you are really managing populations you manage each age group when trying to cut down the numbers.

#2 within those age groups take out the bottom whatever % to improve genetics within the age group.

Like I said if you need population management and are culling bucks there would be a reason to take this buck. If you are loaded with 6 and 8 point yearlings this is a scrub compared to the rest of your herd.

What most people do not realize is that you can do more for your deer herd with doe management than buck harvesting in the first 4 yrs or so. Intensive management and culling is never pretty at the start of a program but after 8 to 10 yrs if one can stick to their program they will see a change. Most people can not stick to their goals that long due to the work involved with this type of management.

Not necessarily. Just throwing a scenario out there. There are too many factors to consider. As far as pure genetics go, it wouldn't really make a difference, because, unless they are VERY well fed, you're going to have a hard time determining anything from their first set of antlers. You will just be taking out more bucks.

On our place, we still would not shoot him. I'd like as many mature bucks on our place as possible. 130 inch mature deer would make a lot of people happy.

This doesnt hold water because bucks across the range have the same browse/food to choose from. Whether or not its high or low protein you can judge the best and worst genetics across an age group.

Agreed Justin and there in lies the answer- you are specific in your management goals for today. In 8 yrs it might be that you need to upgrade your culling if your have to many bucks for what you want to carry on your lease. So it is a given that some bucks will have to go to make room for this years fawn crop.
I would have to disagree with you on the statement "As far as pure genetics go, it wouldn't really make a difference, because, unless they are VERY well fed, you're going to have a hard time determining anything from their first set of antlers." If your program is progressing and you are culling a certain look in a group of the bucks every year and do it consisently it your bucks will be breeding that look that they had as a yearling from what I have learned. I agree you still have the doe factor but with management of the doe side you can alter to a point the genetics of your herd. LF is different unless you have enough acres to impact a central core area. 130 inch deer makes many hunters very happy, I just like to see them hit that mark as early in life as possible.

x2 Thats why when blanket photos with zero ranch history pops up and people start stating bad genes cull him doen's hold water 99 percent of the time. Most people are better off just trying to manage the age of there bucks giving them the up most ability to reach their max potentional then wiping out age classes of bucks, when thier efforts are nothing and maybe even counter productive with out true herd data

How many hunters on this board are truely hunting under an intese productive managment program? Not many...

Bobcat- trying to talk to both of you at the same time.. I don't know anything about your ranch but I know some about stxranchmans place...

stxranchmans place falls in the same catogory of management as Amo's.."with out the fence".. so they are programs that have lots of history and great harvest and number records, and many years already into there program which has already evolved or is past the first couple steps they started with

BOBO the German in me wants to stay and enjoy the debate and challenge the Polish mind I have but the hunter says..."screw it and lets go hunting"!!! So I am going to sit and enjoy some wildlife and take some pics!

bring us back some great pics!!!! Good luck!!

If you want to really want to impact genetics, your management of spikes, if they were to be inferior, would need to be intense. You would basically have to shoot a TON of bucks and leave only a couple of the most inferior. In evolutionary gentics it would be something similar peripatric speciation, or the founder effect. If you then wanted to manage the does, you would want to shoot the absoulte oldest does you could, if you are talking just genetics. This is assuming that you can actually say for sure that a spike is inferior...I'm not convinced of that yet. I haven't really seen evidence on either side to convince me 100%, but I do know a spike CAN grow into a very nice deer, so for now, I'd keep him around.

Here's my take..... free....

If he's in an AR county, he's dead, no chance of making it till next year, increasing the "if you don't shoot him someone else will" not reducing it.

Pretty sure you are following him correctly.... cuz the management he is talking about is hammering on the lessors buck for several years. Which even Kroll says is the only true low fence culling that will work but it has to be extremly intense and will take many years and its a blind faith type program.. most people don't have the stomach of possibley lossing upwards of 70 percent of their bucks the first 4-6 years of the program

Here is another way for me to put it. Even though I MAY be keeping around a couple of inferior deer, I want to see each one's potential. My goal currently is to shoot a deer bigger than the one I shot last year. I only need to shoot ONE of them. I don't think in the relatively short time that I am impacting the herd, that culling will have much of an effect. When you talk about altering population genetics, these things happen over thousands of years. I want more mature bucks there to ensure more chances of one buck growing over 150 inches.

Thats the way i roll

when your mature deer herd is made up of 120 and 130 inch bucks you quickly grow tired of it.


Personally, i don't cull yearling deer, unless there is something wrong, like horns growing sideways, etc. I give them the benefit of the doubt and feed them for one more year.

but at 2 1/2 years old, if he isn't sporting 8 points, hes a goner.



in all honesty, i don't buy into the kerr spike study results, and as far as managment goes, if you don't have the neccesary tools to manage a place (large acrerage and/or a high fence, feeding program, selective harvests,etc) your more or less pissing in the wind. I see pics all the time of a buck someone saw on their 150 acre family farm and they ask "well, should i cull him? its really not going to matter very much, if that buck is over 3 he's done spread his genes around.

Why don't you buy into the kerr study. Did you happen to know Kroll doesn't get along with the guys at Kerr. Did you know that he is honestly not a very reliable source. He has set out to disprove the kerr study, and he has a lot of false information. So now onto differnet stories, anything that is 2 years and older and is not a nice 7 gets culled. Most of our culling is done at a yearling age and 3 to 4 yr old. But we also have mld's, so it's a lot easier for us to do our culling that we need done.

One thing that I have learned is that if you do not cull any yearlings until they are mature you will have some trophies and if you cull everything with less than 8 points starting as yearling you will have some trophies when they mature. End result is the same with 2 different management goals. Both produced trophies due to bucks maturing. One produced a lot more older bucks with lessor antler qualities than those with good antlers and the other produced fewer bucks to harvest from but the same number of good quality bucks. Just a whole lot less mature mouths to feed and do the breeding.
Right now it is impacting the herd here after 10+ years of culling very intensively, for the last 3 yrs 80% of the yearling bucks have 6 points or more with some yearlings have 9 points or more in growing numbers. So why do I want to keep around the lessor ones? I do not need that many bucks at mature ages. Those mature bucks left at age 4 fit the critera for a trophy to me and are left to mature and they are doing the majority of the breeding since they are the only mature bucks here. If you are managing for numbers it is just not good management to keep that many bucks until they are mature and then try to harvest off only mature bucks. That is just to difficult to do. Anyone who hunts and has mature deer knows how hard it is to find those trophy deer you have trail photos of during the hunting season. Now take and double or triple the number of mature bucks out there that need to be harvested and you see the dilema. Add in LF into the mix and it is compounded again. Since you are leasing a place it is not as critical to try to alter genetics since you only need that one buck bigger than the last one you took and in your numbers game it will come true no doubt. It is just not what I want to manage for. Again what works for you might or might not work for someone else and the same for me.