Just making an observation. All possibilities are left to the minds of those who study the images and come to their own conclusions.

So you are saying a spike lineage is a trash pedigree??? Lol

What they were doing, yes. They were breeding to produce the smallest horns possible, surprised they didn't toss in a cpl coues deer as kickers.

So your saying gentics plays a role? And maybe inferior deer (spike lineage in this case) bred to inferior deer (another spike) produces smaller deer? hmmmm

I wonder what Kroll would say about this? Lol

What is being said is that the way the study was conducted is something that would never happen in a native LF environment.

#1 it says inbreeding isn't good. You start out with real low scoring deer, no matter what they start out as point-wise then start linebreeding them, they're going to continue to get smaller & less fertile. (That screams a bunch of quacks with no real take on biology were running that show)

..or they knew what they were doing & had it rigged.

Thanks to this thread I just decided to let a spike have a free pass.

I think you need to re read the studies and make some educated points.

Show me where linline breeding a buck soley to it offspring happens for several generations?

Even using a dpm pen you cant do that.....even in a hf place you cant do that unless you build a 20ft tall fence and clear out every deer but one buck and one doe.

You sure as hell cant do it on low fence cause you will always have dispersal


First what was the geneolgy of the two bucks used...the conclusion of kerr was a spike will always be behind a forked counter part at maturity bc score wise....

Then why not cull out every buck as a yearling thats not 10pts or better.....

After several years of intense culling why will you always have 8pts?

Txhunter, my favorite comment of the whole discussion, we have always shot spikes, just for the extra meat, not sure if it has affected our herd because we are surrounded by lightly hunted larger properties. Definitely an interested read!

It doesn't effect the genetics of your bucks or herd..just the number that makes it to maturity

This stuff is like politics no one is ever right..I have shot spikes for years on ranches and their genetics improved and the
deer in many instances were not on protein and got very little corn except in season. And since when does any ranch raise intentionally 8's..Those same ranches we saw an abundance of 6 to
8 point yearlings within three years..Also, the State facility in
Kerrville ran years of tests that disprove the above stated concern about killing spikes..Don

There are already highly managed ranches that are already taking yearling bucks with less than 6 pts. It's already being done. Funny how those ranches have very few if any yearling spikes.

What management plan wants all the bucks reaching maturity?

Why dot cattle managers keep all the bull calves to maturity?

Genetics play a part folks.

don't for get about the momma's..............

also define several years.......

Upon observation, it would appear the deer's head grew very little over the course of several years. Some might question if the photo of the spike is not a separate deer with similar tags.

For that it's worth, even my wife cannot believe the spike shown is just 1.5 years old.

Ok...how many are they shooting a year....how many years did it take to get to them point of that very few now have spikes?

Im sure they didn't do anything else either that may be the result of lower spike numbers like increase cc, decreased herd size. Etc.

Its like saying on my ranch over the past ten years we went from an average of 120 to over 150...because we did only did one thing...lol

I wouldn't hang your hat on the validity of your observation based on looking a picture on the net......... if this site has done nothing else its proved even the most experienced "WT" score'rs/ agers get much different results based on pictures.

frankly it weakens your credibility.

there are much stronger arguments based on the researcher articles to debate the validity of these studies.

Is it contributed to one thing? Did anyone say that?

How many spikes have you seen in good breeder pens? Very few if any.

I think the Kerr study shoots down some of the "it's a spike due to bad nutrition" more than it does "it's a spike and will always be inferior".

Fact is most texas ranches are overpopulated...what not take out your weaker animals in each age class to improve your genetics? Those genetics also improve the upcoming doe genetics.

Ok king did it for 10 on two seperate 7k pastures(shooyting all 8pts or less on one and nothing on the other) and found zero change on bc score.

Again shooting spikes does nothing to change genetics... only time shooting spikes makes any sense is if you have to get under cc and you've ran out of does...even then one could argue you better off hammering 3-4 year olds because you can atleast have a better educated idea of their potential. On top of that your talking about less the 2% of leases that have the tag numbers to fo it.

Until you can tell what the does influence is only then will you have an agruement....if you can proven 1.5 year old spikes are genetic or environmental..

You cant use the most controled environment in the world to access the potential of spikes..aka the breeder pens...they have zero environmental influences..

Even then a breeder will sale you any buck on his place for an amount...but there will always be a doe he won't part with


Truth is there are several ranches with the right resources that fall on opposite sides of the spike debate that have have similar results on the top end... there are also ranches that even with the best culling still cant break 160 until they import. If culling truely worked for genetics then sky would be the limit on top end score

I'd argue that 10 is the point you might begin to see change not finish a study, as your barely past one full generation of deer but were getting off base here with how to conduct a study.

So if I shoot all the spikes and "wide" deer (let's just call it 13"), I won't have a bunch of mature narrow deer?