Wanna know why your deer hunts are “normally unsuccessful”?

His last sentence, Amen. Often times I feel we've all been caught up in the "mystical stag" mantra of QDM that we forget the real reason we go in the field in the first place.

Awesome, brah. Take them both hunting, shoot all the young bucks, then in a couple of years when your kid asks you where are all the big deer, you can tell her that she shot them a couple of years ago.

You need to have some flexibility as to judgement. We are all not endowed with access to vast superior hunting grounds. I have 160 acres surrounded with low fence hunted land. I try to encourage my family to hold out for mature bucks. A minimum of 8 points or better. However I do want to ensure my family members who have the desire maintain enthusiasm and if I hold firm to this standard some will never shoot a buck with there limited hunting access time. Shooting a doe no matter how frequent does not satisfy the nostalgia taking that horned trophy. After 3 years of failing to get tht mature buck I suggested my grandson take a noble but young 6. I hate to admit such a horrible transgression here but making sure my grandson wants to return this year to share my passion is worth the disdain I expect some will have for me but so be it!!!!!!!!!!!

Laid Back, Laid Over, whatever your name is this week, what you mis-name as “elite-ism”, is really just hard work, constant feeding, selective hunting, patience, & management. But you wouldn’t know anything about any of that. It’s easier to just call hunters like that “elitist”.

But I hope you get a good rabbit this deer season.

You would have an excellent point, if it stopped there. But it doesn’t stop there. You forgot the part where you impose your ideas on others. You expect everyone to have the same goals, means, and expectations as you. That’s not only unrealistic, but a bit self-centered.

There’s a happy medium to be had here. Something between kill ‘em all and kill only booners. At the core of that middle ground lies conservation and understanding. Without conservation, nobody wins. Without understanding, you will always have two separate groups. As long as there’s two separate groups, advancing or preserving our more important rights will be difficult. You know, rights such as hunting and whatnot.

Preserving our right to hunt should be at the forefront of our little outdoor oriented minds. If you have any desire to do your part in preserving that right, I highly recommend that you heed the fact that the general public doesn’t give two squirts of cat crap about antler quality. They care that the animals are plentiful, healthy, dispatched of humanely, and put to proper use. I fully support you in your quest of bigger deer, and I don’t care if you feed the tough old hams to your dogs. But plenty of people do care, and they have plenty of say in the future of hunting, be it for meat, sport, or trophy. All I ask is that you act accordingly.

[quote=maximus_flavius]They care that the animals are plentiful, healthy, dispatched of humanely, and put to proper use. I fully support you in your quest of bigger deer, and I don’t care if you feed the tough old hams to your dogs. But plenty of people do care, and they have plenty of say in the future of hunting, be it for meat, sport, or trophy. All I ask is that you act accordingly.

So I can’t say anything of other hunters, but your asking me to be ok with what they do? That’s kinda self centered a bit. I’ll continue to have my opinions & voice them as I see fit. I will also continue to look down on idiots who live by “if it’s brown, it’s down” mantra.

I will also have to disagree with you that these people care about “plenty, healthy, etc”. All they care about is filling their freezer or shooting any legal deer.

[quote=maximus_flavius]Probably because he is actually doing real hunting .... the kind that doesn't involve feeders and game cameras

I have been deer hunting seriously for about 3 years. Last year I let a beautiful young chocolate horned 10 point walk because of all the reading I do about "let them get old" etc. 20 minutes later from the direction he walked off I heard the familiar boom...whomp from the neighbor. We hunt about 600 acres of family land just North of the metromess, to me if everyone in Denton county is not thinking the same thing as I was, "oh he is young let him walk", it is not really worth it. I ended up shooting a bigger bodied nice to me 8 point but I never posted a picture here because of the ridicule that comes to those who shoot a younger deer. I have now shot two 3 year old deer in my 3 years of hunting and they were delicious which is our main focus. I mentioned I might try to wait for an older deer this year to my wife and her response was "if you get a chance to take a legal deer you need to". She said "we have newly married kids and a few families at church that need food some times and if we have plenty of meat we can share". We are not poor and can buy meat but being able to share venison and fish that we kill or catch and eggs from our chickens and vegetables from the garden is deeply satisfying. I say if you are harvesting whatever you decide to, licensed and within the limits of the law then go for it and be grateful. Biblically it is the reason all of the bounty of this really awesome Earth is here, for us!!