Some say 3.5, some 4.5, some 5.5, some 6.5, some 7.5, some 8.5. And everyone is right in their own minds. I never figured this thread for this amount of staying power.

a deer will never reach trophy size unless he has age on him. Best way to do that is to keep your finger off the trigger. You will never kill a 160" deer if you keep shooting them when they are 130" and 3 years old.

You can feed till your hearts desire, burn 100's of gallons of diesel planting food plots, read every book James Kroll ever wrote, but its not going to amount to a hill of beans unless you control your harvest based on age guidelines.

Rifleman is the Viagra of dying threads on here.

We killed 32 does one year off of our 425 acre place in the Hill Country. We could have done the same thing every year, but the 2-3 years following the doe killing year, we had different and better bucks show up on camera and in person. The killing year allowed different does and bucks to come into the pasture and provided what I saw as some refreshment in regard to the genetics. The taking of these does allowed for more feed for the remaining deer for a short period of time and it genetically mixed up what was probably a stagnant gene pool. Killing does in that part of the country is like digging a hole in sand , but it can and does help if you can stand gutting that many in a season.

i completely agree. I'm just curious (and mostly playing devils advocate to keep the conversation going) how many guys who are doing those things are actually seeing more and bigger bucks each year. I have no doubt those methods do work. Just interested in the success rate.

It can be easy to say you are seeing bigger deer each year, does anybody keep records of deer seen each season? I know the place my father was on a couple years ago required each hunter (even guests to keep a log after each hunt stating how many deer were seen, and an approximate age (if you could tell) and approximate spread on bucks.

He would never have seen it if I were hunting when he stepped out and I would not have lost any sleep over it

I keep records, history of deer and grid the place with cameras where i do 90% of my hunting. Very seldom am am II suprised by a new deer. If I am it's usually in mid-Oct and just for a cpl weeks. Top end really isn't getting bigger, although the one I shot this past year should have been around 160 instead of our usual 130-145" range.

In today's world, if you are hunting a low fence ranch, it is very difficult to "manage" to trophy deer. To some that may be 8 point/3.5 year or to others 10 point/5.5+ year old deer. But if your neighbors aren't following the same program, your are SOL. I will say this does depend on geography, habitat, number of hunters and area of Texas your lease is at. The last lease we managed (low fence) we fed protein and corn year round, had food plots (which produced depending on rainfall), and encouraged hunters to harvest to a management population which included doe harvest. We did see nominal improvement in buck body size and antler size over 7 years, but many bucks that showed in camera one year never appeared again. Our only thought was either Mother Nature - drought, predators, etc, or neighbors. Management rules are great, but again if your neighbors are not co-op'd with you, you will see minimal results from a management/feeding program. Not to say a savvy hunter can't still find a big buck if he hunts right.

It's just hard to think about an area where bucks "cant" get old when I see a handful of old bucks every year that literally have no more than 400 acres to run around on between houses and a lake.

Guess you wouldn't be hunting with Milo Hanson then.

Yep.. Manage for age and hope to get a few outliers. The right deer can bust into the 160-190" range but those will be very few and far between. I've been watching 1 buck since 08 that was decent then that put on his biggest rack last yr after finally getting healthy. Chances are real good that I should have shot him in 2010 which was the last time I put eyes on him.

i completely agree. I'm just curious (and mostly playing devils advocate to keep the conversation going) how many guys who are doing those things are actually seeing more and bigger bucks each year. I have no doubt those methods do work. Just interested in the success rate.

It can be easy to say you are seeing bigger deer each year, does anybody keep records of deer seen each season? I know the place my father was on a couple years ago required each hunter (even guests to keep a log after each hunt stating how many deer were seen, and an approximate age (if you could tell) and approximate spread on bucks.

It's just hard to think about an area where bucks "cant" get old when I see a handful of old bucks every year that literally have no more than 400 acres to run around on between houses and a lake.

There are a lot of old bucks that never get shot due to the number of points on top of their head and many people calling them young. Some really old bucks on some places...aka Gumby

Nothing like working off the neighbors management also...

Easy for them to if folks in them houses are hand feeding them from their porches. And you wonder where big goes.......Aunt Bee is hand feeding him cornbread all winter.

Says the person with multiple Gumby's.

I'll bite. About 10 years ago we drastically reduced the number of bucks we were taking, drastically increased the number of does we were taking, and started feeding protein. Prior to that, the rule had been 9 points or better, period. Within two years of those changes, we harvested 3 bucks over 160, which hadn't happened since 1992 (and in 1992 we took the only 160+ buck taken in 30+ years). That was 2006 and 2007, both of which had excellent rainfall. In 2010 we took a 172. In that same 10 year period, we have let another half dozen or so in the 150-160 range walk. It doesn't get better every year, of course, but the average gets better and we hold out for those years when we get the magical combination of rainfall and the right buck hitting peak age. It's not for everyone, but the 3 of us that really hunt our ranch are happy to shoot does and take pics of bucks most years, holding out for the next giant.

Says THE person with multiple Gumby's.