Originally posted by Arrowhead80:
If you ain't gonna mount it please shoot a doe.
I can guarantee, with near 100% certainty, that I will never have a buck mounted. So I should be shooting only does??
Maybe I'm reading too much into your post or maybe I need to wait for the coffee to kick in, but much of the flack hunters take from the general public is because of trophy hunting and the "need to shoot a big one" mentality.
The whole QDM gets to me too. Some of the dumbest bucks I've come across have been on QDM properties. They keep running across hunters who don't threaten them, then become accustomed to them and stopped running away - just like my 'yard deer'. As a deer ages his body will get bigger, but not necessarily his antlers... I've been watching a 4pt for years. He's starting to gray in the muzzle now. There are some spikes running around here that are in their prime too.
I'm in this for the challenge. Whether that challenge is to chase a particular animal (did that for 2 years starting when the deer was a yearling!), get within range of a big buck or fool an old doe (the hardest imo) doesn't matter.
Off to get another cup of java...