What people don't get or want to get is hunting is hunting bow, crossbow, rifle, shotgun, whichever a dead deer is a dead deer, pressure is pressure! Shoot whatever you want. Use to a bow would really be only accurate past 30 yards, now shots are easy to 60 plus yards. Making the standard so strict for everyone is not going to solve the problem. If you choose big deer choose big deer. Some people could care less about antlers and should be able to dictate their choice on their own land, period! Even in trophy clubs people kill more than they should. It is just hard to control, unless you have large tracts of connecting land, accept it! In some cases hunting has already got too controlled. Why should anybody have to pay $200 to come here or go to another state to shoot one deer? One deer! Not only has prices gone crazy here look at Florida. If had my own land to hunt in Florida or on a WMA and it took 3 visits spread out over the season to shoot one deer and one turkey, different weapons each hunt, it would cost me over $325 just for permits and licenses. Wow! Permits for this permits for that. It has gone crazy to the point of no return! If I had my own land the state would not come and feed the deer. I have friend there that pays over $600 just on property taxes in Florida , but can't hunt without buying a license. To legally try to shoot one deer and one turkey a year he would have to pay $925+ in one year. The state don't pay that why should we? They don't feed his deer or turkey, but only tell him what he can do and when. Government over reach is out of control and we have allowed this! Why?

WmHunter, generally I feel like you and I see things alike, but I'll just have to politely agree to disagree on this. For YEARS we've been throwing the number around about fewer license sales (for me, it's not a trustworthy metric), but I don't believe it tells the full or correct story. Like Twain said about statistics, you can basically make them say what you need them to say ("damn lies"). Boots on the ground would tell me there is more hunting pressure today than ever before, and I hunt multiple public and private tracts across the middle 1/3 of the state (so I have a fairly substantial sample size). Not deer related, but I'm passionately convinced that HUNTERS have been the biggest threat to turkeys in the last 25 years (not ants, or predators, or Spring burning.....those things have ALWAYS been here, but there are manifold more turkey hunters today than there was when I was coming up in the 80's / 90's) Both the old lands I have hunted for 30+ years, along with all the new places I've started hunting more recently, the two constants are more people and less deer.

I think there's a trend for less hunters......I think where it gets confused as it being the opposite is due to the fact that there has been a decline in habitat combined with the increased lease prices driving the average man out of the game and forcing more and more folks who used to lease land to look to public hunting. .....JMO

Very good point, it isn’t just animals that have fewer acres to roam. I used to have plenty of free land to hunt for doves, quail, deer and turkeys. I didn’t have to pay for great dove shoots, people I knew had land and invited us. I didn’t have to be in a hunting club for hunting, land owners gave me written permission and I hunted all I wanted. Now, the price of getting into a decent club is a mortgage payment on a house, I know a lot of people can’t afford that. I tried to hunt WMA’s jack-legs coming in on me ruined that, I feel for people that think they need to ruin other’s experiences while hunting public land.

I am all for landowners and lessees doing everything possible to maximize the quality of the land for deer and wildlife habitat. I think everyone is. I certainly am and use fire, timber thinning, liming, planting, all sorts of things. Countless landowners and lessees have been doing that for decades now. Each year more and more people do that. Each year more and more people subscribe to QDM. Each year more and more hunters up their buck standards.

The problem is that in your posts in all these several threads you have been clearly calling out and asking for some kind of weird government intervention to restrict and limit other people's hunting and land use - in order to benefit yourself. Your above post seems to be backtracking on that which is good.

Very observant , I think we're bout to have a break through.

And there is little that anyone can do to stop the trend - other then to band together in hunting clubs that control as much land as possible for their club.

Of course, anyone is also free to improve their lot in life and produce more income so they can afford or be willing to spend more on the outdoor lifestyle. Or spend more on whatever it is they want.

The problem I have with some in this thread and the other threads is they keep making complaints on here - with the subtle (or not so subtle) call for government intervention to redistribute resources from out of private hands and into their greedy socialist hands.

Any bow Mid Oct to day before Thanksgiving
Any bow or muzzle loader Thanksgiving day through Christmas Eve
Any bow, muzzle loader or firearm Christmas Day to day before Valentines

Keep you stick on the ice boys.

^^^
I like that CatHead