Oh. . .where i've hunted I don't see any declining population
of deer of any sex or age.
When i've hunted far West Texas,I've seen 'em starve to death. . .but not overhunted.

"Texas is home to the most white-tailed deer of any other U.S. state or Canadian province, with an estimated population of over four million." Yep, Texas needs help....YAY ARs!

Let change it to only shoot a 3.5 yr old instead of the 13" rule. Or better yet lets make it 8 pts or better. Or we could let people in these counties shoot 1 deer only, doe or buck. No offense but who on this site really goes out and says out loud or to themselves, "I think I will shoot a small buck today"? No one because most hunters in Texas dream about shooting a large buck. If that opportunity doesn't arise shoot a doe to fill your freezer.

unless you don't have a doe tag........

Find another county... I'm not a huge fan of AR's but TX is a big state, lots of good places to hunt. If I was a MEAT hunter, I'd find a hill country lease and fill my tags that morning. AR's arn't going to go away.. To many landowners made the push to get AR's, those same landowners love them and so it will continue. Other option is MLD.. great program and win win all the way around

AMEN!!

I don't get this. Everyone that is against ARs say that they are just "meat hunters". Well then just go shoot a DOE. Those have MEAT and no antlers. Last time I check you had 5 DOE tags on your license. Shoot them all up. If you are in a county that doesn't allow 5, then apply to public hunts in other counties, or find a cheap hunt.

ARs may not be the BEST choice, but since your average hunter is incapable of properly aging a deer on the hoof, antlers are the only way to go.

As stated many times, some leases you have to have doe permits and sometimes you have less permits than hunters, so someone will go without venison. I know, get on the MLD program, the owner of our lease doesn't really want us to do it AND I'm not going to another lease because my family hunts this one as well as some close friend. To me it's just as hard to tell if a buck's antlers are 13" wide with it in the woods, at a distance, moving around, etc. as it is to age one by the body. What I don't get is what the problem AR likers have with us AR opposers. The ARs are there, you should be happy. It's okay for us "meat hunters" to hate ARs, we gotta live with them and we are allowed to vent....makes us feel better....

Amen curly! sick of hearing go shoot a doe! Or go get a lease somewere and pay big bucks. I shouldnt have to get a lease when i have my own property. I also shouldnt have to wait for a deer 13in in width to be able to kill! If the trophy hunters want bigger deer let them pay the big bucks for those horns or if they want more bucks lower the bag limit! I can shoot my deer buck or doe and restrict the bag limit so everybody is happy. See how easy it is and i dont even have a degree. LOL.

IMO things such as AR's should be "suggested" then left up to the individual lease (either the lease owner or the leaseors)
Before AR our lease rule (per the land owner) was 6 pt or better WE made the rule (unofficial) 8 pt or better.

IMO a preson that only gets to go 1 or 2 weekends a year should be allowed to take ANY deer he sees. Those of us that get to go every weekend and even spend some vacation time should used our own discression.

We have had our lease over 10 years, in that time "most" of us have gone from shooting any deer we see,to the self imposed 8 pt or better rule, to feeding some protien. Yes the quality of our deer herd has improved and when the land owner sees that we are killing bigger and better deer, you can see dollar signs in her eyes. Her comment this year (2 weeks ago) was that her limits on the lease would stay the same this year and if she changes to the new AR limits (a 13" and a spike plus 3 doe) she would have to go up on us.

If it is doe by permit, then maybe there is a REASON for that. Maybe it is because of lower densities. Maybe you are hunting a small tract of land and are taking more than your share, which is causing the problem.

I'm not saying it is YOU in particular, but there are restrictions for a reason. You may not agree with them because you can't go out and shoot anything that moves, but that doesn't make them a bad thing. Fayette county was one of the original counties with antler restrictions. My family has a place around there and we NEVER EVER saw deer there. Now, we have many picture of deer on our place. The restrictions are clearly working.

What most people don't understand is that age structure is crucial to a species, not just numbers and sex ratios.

I'm happy for you.....we see no more deer now than we did before ARs and we are hunting 780 acres. We have lots of doe, the doe to buck ratio is bad, so bad our bucks dont' even have to fight over them. We fill out a harvest survey from the TP&W every year that asks what type of deer and how many was seen and taken every season. Been doing it for years now. So the TP&W knows, or should know what's going on at our place. We get 1 doe permit for ever 200 acres. I think I have stated all of this before in this thread, if so, my apologies.

Okay Curly, so it does not sound like the antler restrictions are the problem. If your place has such an abundance of does, then that is what should change, not the ARs, right?

On our lease, we have 1700 acres, and we see on average 15 deer in an evening hunt, depending on where you are on the lease. We typically kill 15 does a year, last year was the exception at 25. It sounds like you may want to complain to TPWD about your doe permits and you may get the results you want.

How about hopkins co. in e.tx. TPWD made the rules not me and now we can kill more deer than ever before and the numbers have dropped to a all time low in the 23yrs i have owned this land. 2 bucks and 2 does is way more than our area can stand to harvest and most people will take whatever is legal no matter what the numbers dictate we should be taking. Didnt kill a deer last year. First time in 20 plus years because of these new rules and regs and it aint gettin any better. Talked to the biologists and the game warden and nothin being done. I guess because tpwd knows better than me whats going on i guess i will kill every deer i can legally and not worry because tpwd knows whats best!

Well maybe they should close the season for a few years over there. I think you guys are confused on the difference between ARs and bag limits. Y'all are jumping all over the ARs because it restricts the amount of deer you can shoot, but no complaints about bag limits.

You can't discredit the ARs because of the bag limits. In fact, if you see so many less deer, maybe you should push to close the season until the number are up? That seems logical, except that everyone wants to take as much as they can from a limited resource.

The problems I have with ARs are: -just another deer hunting rule to have to follow making deer hunting more difficult, -they are doing it to make us shoot more "mature" bucks (nothing to do with trophy hunting, right) yet it's legal to shoot a young spike as well as a "mature" buck, -antlers are now the legal binding factor on aging a buck not it's body size or shape.........was most of the Texas deer population really hurting bad enough to impose the maditory ARs? If we could push to close a season on a county and TP&W agree to it, why can't we just push to get rid of the ARs or to decrease the legal bag limit on deer, same logic. BTW, if you don't like folks who take all the deer they can, point the finger at the TP&W. As Hoytman has stated, they are the ones who increased the bag limits.

Curly and Hoytman: I understand the ARs impose restrictions that you don't like, but if they were to go to a per acre limit on total deer, which would be an alternative, then y'all would be even more upset. It seems like you want to shoot anything you please, whenever you want it, regardless of laws. Your logic fails because I could say that any law restricting harvest of deer is "just another deer hunting rule to have to follow making deer hunting more difficult".

I'm done arguing. You obviously want what is best for YOUR situation, and not the deer herd on a whole. If you were, you'd be complaining about the bag limit increase as much as the ARs, and you aren't.

This gets old, doesn't it? Nobody on either side will ever convert....funny how still nobody can seem to answer the 2 questions I keep asking, IF ARs are about letting young deer walk, then why can we legally shoot a young spike? Were the deer herds in Texas really hurting in the first place?

You can legally shoot a young spike b/c some many people like you complained because you just had to shoot something and TPWD had to make you happy but they failed in that as well, right?

I think you should answer the question yourself as far as deer herds hurting in the first place. What was the average age of deer killed in on your properties over the last few years? Most deer killed every year in Texas are killed in the 2.5 range, not good for the deer herd...

If most deer killed in tx are 2.5 and we have more deer than anybody else in the nation were are we going wrong? The ar rules are for big bucks, [cash and deer] I dont have a problem with people wanting more big bucks on there property. What i do have a problem with is the amount of deer that can be harvested and what the population was and is now! TPWD MADE THE RULES AND THE LAWS ON WHAT CAN BE HARVESTED. in the 3yrs that the new laws have been in place i have seen a drastic drop in deer numbers at our place and nothing has changed, in fact we have had better rains in the last few years and the trees have dropped bumper crops of acorns, basically food is in abundance everywere! The only answer is now we can kill 4 deer in rifle season were we once could only kill 1 or 2 if your a bow hunt. For 23 yrs i have owned this place and could kill 1 deer and saw deer everytime i went out and now i can hunt days and not see a deer, Personally i would prefer to kill 1 deer, even if its a small buck and see deer every time i hunt to not seeing hardly any deer and maybe seeing a 13in buck after hunting all season! I talked to the warden and the biologists at the meat locker and they dont give a rats azz as long as the laws are inforced.

Curly, EASY question to answer, but you won't change your mind even with evidence. One of the biggest controversies about deer management is if spikes are genetically inferior compared to 1.5 year olds with branched antlers. There is a very famous study done at the Kerr WMA.

http://www.tpwd.state.tx.us/publications/pwdpubs/media/pwd_bk_w7000_0155.pdf

This study concluded that spikes were in fact, genetically inferior. This is not to say that a spike cannot grow up to be a serious trophy, because things like the secondary rut create younger deer by a few months, which could cause a buck to be a spike, not actual genetics. But, if you look at stats, and on a whole, spikes have a trend of being inferior in antler size. Therefore, TPWD likely let spikes be harvested for mangagement purposes, so they didn't step on the toes of the management minded people. These people don't even need ARs, since they manage on their own. This rule lets them keep managing that way.

A secondary thing may have been to let "meat hunters" like yourself have the opportunity to still fill your freezer.



Furthermore, I like how you and Hoytman like to say how many deer there are in Texas. Well, Texas is the largest state in the union, we clearly should have more deer! What a poor argument. Densities of deer are very high in the Hill Country and South Texas, but not as high in the regions between Austin and Houston (where the first ARs were) and East Texas. Therefore the need to act on which deer are being taken.

Another poor argument has been made about bucks breeding to bucks since no more deer would be left, but then you make some comment about how you are limited in how many does you can shoot, since they are by permit. Another invalid argument.

Hoytman, I guess we are just a couple of dumb arses....

TPWD thinks they are the be-all-end-all to spike deer research. Yet they won't have their research reviewed by peers in the scientific community. When they DID have the Wildlife Management Institue (WMI) review the whole agency's scientific methods, they did not follow the recommendations of WMI, nor correct the flaws, and apply them to the ARs that were already underway across the state. They kept pushing a reg based on flawed science.

Furthermore TPWD discounts any spike research that contridicts thier own 30 yr old, Kerr zoo study.

Why do you discount the Spike research that contridicts the TPWD, Kerr 30 yr old, controlled environment, slanted research. Do a search, to see these studies.

Is this about horns and gentetics or Age Structure ?

All this spike/genetic research discussion has no place in AR regulation other than the AGE of the spike. !!!

Per TPWD it is about age structure. They can't say what the age structure is, or what the "trigger/target" is that cause the need for regulatory change. Then they mandate letting young deer walk to increase the "Age Structure" out of one side of their mouth, and allow shooting (young) spike out of the other.

As ussual my point is misconstrued, i want MORE deer and if you can find a way to do that and get bigger bucks im all for it. TPW made the rules i have to go by wich again im ok with, but what im not ok with is a 4 deer limit in a county wich cant support that limit and everybody keeps saying it has nothing to do with ar rules. The bag limit and the ar rules came out together and by the same people so to me its one and the same. prove me wrong!