Mature to me is 4.5. Fully mature is 5.5+. On our place we only get to see a handful of 5.5+ year olds every year due to the pressure both on our lease and around us.

I believe there is a indirect relationship with age of buck heard vs how many Buck tags are available per person. My point is that a good mature buck in Missouri is 3 to 4 years (you can kill 3 bucks there and rifle season is in the middle of the rut) Vs Kanas is closer to 5 to 6 (you can only kill 1 buck and rifle season is after the rut). Missouri has the ability to grow deer as big and bigger than Kansas, but you just don't see as many 5 year old bucks there.

I believe the same thing happens in Texas with the ability to kill 2 bucks per person in many counties and the ability to kill almost countless with the MLD system (and for longer periods of time). If Texas wants really wants to up the chances for average Joe to get a nice P&Y buck, they need to put the buck tags to one per person (with none transferable) and make the rifle season 10 days like up north. Then we wouldn't need width antler restrictions, we could just say at least 4 points on one side like Missouri has implemented.

Don't think this could happen in Texas because too many people would be up in arms. The result is just a lower age class of bucks on average for the state.....which leads to lower antler scores as well.

I don't acknowledge stupidity and neither should you.