I have two places to hunt, one in Hamilton Co. and the 2nd in Jack Co. Hamilton Co has been in AR for 5th yr and has went from seeing lots of does and yearling to 2 yr olds to lots of yearling and 2 years olds and seeing 3 and 4 yr olds with the occational 5 and 6 year olds. Which is the kind of deer we look for. Instead of shooting those little guys and saying the neighbor would, you have to not shot by law. If th place has good cover, good food ( not a feeder that is ran from 2 weeks before season until every body decides there through hunting for the year ) the hunting will get WAY BETTER. The Jack Co place went into AR yast year and I am happy due to those yearling we pass on will be protected

Not a mature buck in any of those pics. Most of our yearlings and 2.5 year olds don't meet the ar requirements either. Thats the point! Its seems to me you guys that never had any gripes about mature bucks before were probably the ones shooting all the yearlings and 2.5 year old before the ars.
Oh ya, I hunt in Walker county and i love the AR's but not the spike tag. Here is what a mature buck that barely made it looks like. Didnt care if it made it or not because we are Mld but thought i would share. This buck had 13 1/4" spread, was 6.5 years old and scored 135. It was shot by one of our members this year.

After reading all post I dare ANYONE to post trail cam pic of a 5 yr that is not legal. And dough that anyone can post a 4 yr old.

That deer dont look legal to me. If ya spread his ears like tpw goes by i bet his ears are wider. definitly mature tho and thats the reason i hate AR. Just think how many narrow rack genes he spread around after 6yrs! And i have seen many pics on this forum of mature deer that will NEVER make 13in.

that's the point...after 5 yrs, where are they?

on other places we've had control over for a while, a lot of the 2.5yr olds would be TPW shooters.

2- 4yr olds

Lol the deer hanging is legal and the other pic is a fake and not even a good one

Still waiting on that old deer that is not legal

Great deer. But he was a great deer at 12 and 3/4 too.

So if we were shooting them all..... and haven't since ARs started 5 years ago, where are all the monsters now? For that matter, where are the deer at all?

We have been managing over 2000 acres for 15 years for mature bucks. We have 1 buck for every .7 does and we still rarely see mature bucks. They get smarter when they get older. We still manage to kill a few every year. It takes longer than a few years. It takes multiple generations.

It takes exactly 3 years for a deer to get 3 years older.

It was 13 1/4 qaurter inch i personally measured this deer. It doesnt matter anyway because we are mld 3. What i should have mentioned is this was the only narrow racked mature deer that was close the limit that we have killed in 15 years. Its a numbers game. Out of all the bucks we have killed over the years this was the only one.

it takes generations to change herd dynamics.

But only a few years for them to disappear...

Waht county are you hunting in ?

he was legal so we are still waiting for for a pic of a mature deer under 13 inches wide last time I look 13 1/4 is over 13

I don't have a pic of obama either but he is real. So we are all liars? Since I don't have deer pics and I didn't see one in person, is the camera broke? No, it had a ton of squirrels, a few pigs, just not many deer and ZERO legal deer.

And his was MLD, the rules don't apply so he could have been 11 1/4 and been legal.

What county do you hunt in?

Everbody needs to talk to the gamewarden in there area. The intent of the law is to protect it for the first 2 yr of its age. If it is 4 or 5 and 12 3/4 the gamewarden is never even going to measure it ( INTENT OF LAW )They have that as a option

Can you guarantee that? I can't take that risk. I wish they'd jsut reduce the bag limit to the "one deer only" that got us tons of numbers in the past. But since AR's and bag limit increases came about, numbers have plummeted.

You need to go to the TPWD web sight. There figures disagree with what your saying. I lean toward there numbers and in the AR co the average age of bucks havested goes from 1 1/2 to 3 1/2 , How is that a bad thing?

deer hanging is a 12.5" 12pt...4,5yr old.

You are new here, right?

We have beat this horse from dead to alive to dead about 30 times a year. They are cherry picking their data, and they admit it. They know they have data collection problems, too many to renumerate here. Use the search function, go back and read the statistics threads.

Lean where you want to. I have worked with their data set too, and with them on several issues. We have seen their raw data (finally) and it won't support their pretty charts and graphs.

I don't speak from anectdotal once in a while perspectives. Statistical analysis is important to me.

right about that...we still see the same overall genetics from deer shot back in the early 1900s around my parents place.