Define “scrub”.

Lots of folks shoot deer on their “child’s license” if you open them to having them at all people will take advantage of the situation.

It’s been posted many times in the past, but where are all these “mature” less than 13 inch wide bucks? Seems like there are a few pics posted all the time always in non legal hours and it’s one in a blue moon not a noticeable segment of the population at all. People get all bent out of shape about the exception not the rule.

The places I have hunted in AR counties benefited in the early years. A buddy’s place in AR county has benefited tremendously. They went from rarely seeing a deer much less a buck to killing several nice ones and a few over 150, which would be unheard of prior to them.

I have had my place in SE Stephens Co. 43 years. AR has done wonders for deer numbers and antler size. Before AR hunting was dismal at best. Now I can see bucks almost every day. Some bucks in the 140+ range and about a 50/50 buck doe ratio.

It’s not perfect, but I like it.
I have seen a difference in Leon county.
If people would obey the law and let illegal/young bucks walk it would really make a difference.
I have seen nice young deer not quite legal that were always around until the season opens, then after that they are gone never to be seen again.
I can’t understand why people want to shoot these deer but they do.
I have heard stories about old bucks that have less than 13” spread, but we don’t see this.
Our population has been going down because of over harvest of does/illegal bucks and predators resulting in a poor fawn crop.
My fawn crop in Leon county might be 10%.
I have owned this property since 2016 and we have never taken a doe that I know of and the population keeps growing down.

I mirror what Texas452 says. For overall harvest, the antler restriction is working. It would work much better if everyone obeyed the law. My east side neighbor shoots anything that walks. Very poor fawn survival on my place also, but do have 2 that made this far this year..

A lot of what everyone here is attributing to AR, I believe isn’t a result of AR. I think it is more so tied to Hunter education and bias towards mature whitetail hunting in the last decade driven by the hunting industry. Whitetail numbers are driven by the # of tags and habitat/environmental factors not necessarily the AR which keeps you from filling 1 out of your 5 possible tags so I’m not buying that argument that some have made.

I can understand what Augustus is saying and I partly agree. I think ARs probably helps a good bit but part of the credit for better quality/age bucks is an improved mindset of letting younger deer walk and other basic management practices. Everyone used to not talk about deer management but now they do. Not everyone practices it but many do.

I am for AR as I see many more deer especially bucks now than I have ever seen before AR. But understand this...in areas where you see 140's to 160's you probably will never see a mature 13" buck...because we have different species of deer. In areas where a trophy buck is 124" will see many 13"mature bucks. In those places most all are less than 14". In saying this in those areas something needs to change. Where the smaller racks exist you can have many running around causing an over load of bucks that need to be removed. Some hunters make the decision to take some of the small racks anyway but this should be done legally. We need a process where this problem exist. I would like to see a tag given to harvest 8 pt. bucks or better with inside spread less than 13".

There is a process, MLD Harvest option. Those tags allow you to take any buck on the place, regardless of antler restrictions. By signing up for that program they're assuming you have a management plan and therefore give you the tags to follow it. It costs $30/yr. and you use the states tags instead of your own. I'm doing it on my place; it allowed me to shoot a 6.5yr old buck that was 11.25" inside.

I think more widespread understanding of deer management and trophy culture affects more than it did in the past but still a small minority of actual hunters. I still think the average deer hunter only goes out once or twice a season and is looking to shoot whatever shows up and is legal.

Again as someone else said, where are those mature narrow bucks and what percent of the herd do they make up? The average mature buck on our ranch over the years is probably an 125” 8pt, and as I mentioned earlier only one deer in 15 years has not been over 13” by 3.5

Changing the criteria to points instead of width doesn’t change the supposed problem as according to the non AR logic you are now self selecting for bucks with less than 8pts and in 20 years we are going to have this same conversation but it will be about mature 4pts instead of mature 13” bucks.

I think AR’s also helped people get a taste of what a greater than 2 year old buck was. I hunted my childhood believing big deer could only grow in south texas etc. shot my first mature buck and turned the page. If I’d never shot one I’d probably still be there happy as can be with a 2 yo 8 pt.

Yes, I have checked into that and they said they would only allow only a small number of buck tags...I think only 3 for my 640 acres. We belong to a coop(conservation group) that allows us to take bucks allowed by the county and take does by tags. MLD was way too low for number of bucks we have. I carry 35 bucks and 45 does that produces generally around 30 fawns. I have managed this lease for 30 years carefully. This many fawns will give us about 15 bucks and 15 does. We lose about 13-to-14 does with the neighbors and us total. So, going MLD was not for us. Going MLD would only create a greater problem as far as our management plan.

Double ...If you average 124" 8 pt. you are much larger deer than we have...our "trophy" is considered 124". That means only a very few reach 124" and almost no eight points reach 124". I wished we had the kind of bucks that you guys have. What is the largest buck that you hunters harvested? Where do you hunt? By the way I haven't changed any criteria at all. I did mention bucks less than 13" was the only buck but I also think it should be at least 8 point and less than 13". I think after a while P&W might consider this proposal just depends on what percentage the 13" adult buck will make up. I'm not sure, what we average width wise but a guess probably 13"-15". I have all that info in my computer probably some where as I keep most stats on all deer, bucks and does through the years. However, we have taken a few 19 and 20 inchers but very few in the 30 years we hunted the place.

Got it - I interpreted trophy as mature (5.5+) as that’s what we do. If we did a bell curve, I would guess 75% of our mature bucks are in the 120-130 range, with the low end being a 103” 8.5YO shot in 2020 and the high end being a ~160” 6.5YO we had on camera back in 2014. High end harvested so far is 143” 6.5YO. If you have the numbers or pics that would be cool to see as I genuinely have never seen anywhere were a majority of mature deer are consistently not reaching legal width. Not doubting you at all, just curious.

Double....Our biggest buck was 185 lb.s 19 " but no mass... and the next was 175 12pt. (had 118"...) I'll look back through pic.s and try to find a mature with 13". Seems I remember us having an 8pt. with 132" and 13"...lol. We normally never had an eight pt. with more than somewhere around 112" ... so you can see we get the mass and spread but only a few and is an exception. For us to get an eight pt. getting any where close to 130" is almost considered a freak...lol

I’ve told this story before on here but I’ll tell it again. My high school friend owns a small farm in Colorado county that is surrounded by similar sized parcels. Spent a ton of time out there growing up, they had deer but the numbers were not great and they had never killed a deer older than 2 years old in the 10 years they had owned it. Then AR’s get put into effect and everyone was bishing and moaning about it.

4 years later they are killing 6 year old deer and think AR’s are the greatest thing in the world. Deer numbers have increased 4 fold. They don’t have giant deer but they kill mature bucks every year. This would not be possible if it wasn’t for AR’s

There was an old feed store there that was ran by some Germans or Czechs that has a wall lined with yearling and 2 year old buck racks. Verified thru conversations with them, they really believed that was as good as it was every gonna get so you better shoot that Buck when you see him. Education about managment was never in the game plan so the state had to implement it for them.

The hunters complaining about antler restrictions are the very hunters they are directed at. I don’t believe the hunter that has disdain for AR’s is any less skilled at killing deer than the most ardent trophy hunters. In many instances from what I have seen, it may be quite the opposite. A lot of those same hunters I have known have a bigger problem with taking their foot off the gas than the actual antler restrictions. From what I’ve seen, if those same hunters had strong enough age classes of mature bucks to consistently fill their buck tags, they would never complain about AR’s. Hunting pressure or put another way, more buck tags in the pockets of the hunters than a property can realistically produce is at the root of some hunters dislike of antler restrictions that designate a segment of the buck population off limits. This will probably stir up a hornets nest. I am in favor of tags apportioned to individual properties based on a sustainable harvest for the carrying capacity of each acreage. I think tying harvest expectations to what the acreage they hunt can produce on the front side would do more good than AR’s. I also think it would reign in the folks that are not willing to look past their ice chest. It would motivate them to hunt places with enough tags for the way they want to hunt. That would piss off way too many people who count on their neighbors to foot the bill for maintaining habitat to support the deer so they can over harvest what the place they hunt will sustain, which is the genesis for most high fences.

I remember also when I was a kid hunting in east Texas the commonly adopted rule was to hunt for horns until the last week of the season then you shot a buck no matter what it was, cause you had to get a deer.

Never mind that one deer isn’t gonna feed a family for long and you really don’t eat that much deer meat anyway, but you gotta get your buck …..

P&W would need to learn to count deer in a way that reflects the true population instead of counting a partial herd and multiplying that portion of the herd times the total land. That ain't gonna happen I don't think. I do wish P&W would allot tags for the herd that has been counted with a proven process that represents the accurate number of deer..bucks...does....fawns.

They basically do that with MLD. To me Texas is pretty progressive with programs like that and even the ARs appears to be a proactive way of helping manage the deer when the hunters can’t/wont.
I’m a glass half full kinda guy and I know there’s very little perfection out there, so I give TPWD a good grade overall.

I agree that TPWD does a better than average job of population census. Every property is different and the deer population could be significantly higher or lower than a similar property a few miles down the road due to a variety of factors. When I was a teenager I went on some census counts with TPWD around College Station.


There is no way to for the state to get an accurate population count on every property to include bucks, does and fawns. That would be up to the individual property owner and most do not have the time or want to and are unwilling to hire a biologist to do it for them. MLD is the best the individual has to work with if he has a sizeable enough property to enroll or is involved in a Wildlife Managment Co-op.

You can upgrade to the Conservation plan and work directly with a state biologist-he can give tag recommendations that would be more in line with what you want to take.

This year I lost my lease to the solar farm people just recently. They are building a 3000 acres of solar panels. So, I am not involved this year but still I would've liked to have had some permits for 12" bucks during the years when I had the lease. Everything I checked into just didn't fit for us. I was limited for having only 643 acres. My neighbors take care of some of the mature <13" bucks. I had a mature 10pt. with 12" tines and <13" wide my neighbors harvested. So, why am complaining?lol
All of us needs a process for taking out smaller rack bucks from the herd, in my opinion. There are areas that will not have any while some of us will collect some that we can't get rid of. I do believe it will happen in the future.

We are 5 miles south of Nails Creek state park, close to lake Somerville.
Washinton Co., ranch is under MLD operations for last 11yrs. About 20yrs ago
there were hardly any deer here, times have changed.

My biggest troubles has been dealing with pigs....

Double ac...I have found the pic of eight point 13" spread with 130"...I am going to try to attach...I haven't done it for a long time so it may take me a few mistakes to git it done ...