The point of antler restrictions, no pun intended, is not for "big antlers". The point is, many area's have too many antlerless deer and point restrictions are meant to guide hunters away from shooting any yearling buck and attempts to get more hunters to shoot antlerless deer by making it so killing the easy to kill yearling buck is mostly taken off the table.
As times change and we have less hunters and more and more deer and growing herds, we need to accept that different management policies will be needed.
Hunters often confuse the purpose for deer seasons and wrongly believe that deer seasons are somehow about them. The truth is, we have deer seasons as a way to manage deer herds. Deer hunters ARE the managers. We shouldn't always cast blame at our state DNR's. It's WE who make the management decisions everytime we release an arrow or pull a trigger on a firearm.
Deer hunting regulations do not manage deer, they manage deer hunters. And maximizing hunter utility, in the face of growing herds and declining hunter numbers is a must.
If deer hunters cannot or will not kill enough antlerless deer, then buck rules must be tailored to essentially forcefully guide hunters from killing only bucks if they want meat in the freezer. And left to their own devices, most hunters prefer to kill animals with headgear.
A side bonus of antler restrictions is that more bucks will be allowed to mature and then the herd age structure improves and hunters have the increased chance of really having their heart crank up because the odds are far better with antler restrictions of having a 10 yard staredown with a mature monarch of the forest.
A concern to bowhunters should be, if in 10-15 years the hunter numbers really nose dive as the baby boomers age and herds only continue to grow, state agencies will have little option but to elimate "archery" seasons and they'll have to open long "all weapons" seasons and firearms hunters will be hunting next to bow hunters.
Don't get me wrong, I rifle hunt too and enjoy it. But archer's do not want to have to compete with a firearms hunter with a 7MM Mag sitting across the property line from you, or if public land, possibly a few hundred yards from you.
We should be willing to try different regulation options as a way to still preserve the core of our traditional hunting seasons, otherwise we'll lose more than we can believe.
Take the economy for example. I'm from Michigan, the worst place in the nation. Many have been screaming here for 30 years that major changes were needed here otherwise we'd lose it all. Things like diversifying industry, modernizing, cutting workforces before a crash, etc. But many wanted to change nothing, and look where we are now.
Change is constant and change is needed. I realize that's counter-intuitive for us traditional bowhunters who attempt to freeze time in certain ways.
But nothing about antler restrictions will change "how" we hunt, other than certain animals may be off limits for harvest for a year.
Now, if we constantly resist evolving hunter management changes, then we may really lose something.
Hunters not only have the responsibility of their own actions and ethics, but they also must take responsibility for the bigger picture of overall herd management.
Topic: state antler-pt restrictions (Read 1657 times)
