For the last 5 years I have be advocating letting the small deer go on our lease. For some reason these guys just aren't listening. Can you guys give me some tips on how to win their support.

If there are no club rules then probably not.

Run trailcams and see if you got any nocturnal monsters on your lease; if so ,show them the potential if you let the small ones go. If you aren't able to get any good ones on camera,then just find some on the internet,or even this site and tell the other members that they came off your property. From personal experience,trailcam pics have helped me not shoot every 110-115" deer I see because I know there are 125-140 class deer running the same woods. Some people you absolutely won't get through to,but others may take note. Either way,good luck.

Give them a few copies of "Quality Whitetails" magazine and a subscription to QDMA.

That has worked for me several times.

Ok thanks guys

x2

Just encourage them to shoot does for meat. Why shoot a small buck if you are wanting meat. I doubt seriously they are mounting the smaller bucks, are they? Convince them to start putting out minerals each spring to help develop racks, which will cost all of you money. If they realize that by shooting the smaller bucks they are wasting their money by not letting them grow, maybe they will think twice. In addition, you have to have some guidelines established. Patience is the key but you have to have some type of program in place that everyone is on board with and enforce, if it means fining folks for shooting smaller bucks, so be it, but you have to start somewhere.

Maybe they are perfectly happy hunting the way they are hunting now. It sounds like there are 4 people with one goal and that you have a different goal. Find another lease with like minded hunters.

X2

Either people want to learn and manage a deer herd or they don't. Coffee and I disagree on deer mgmt styles but I agree with Coffee here.

I will never go back to a hunting club environment (with average pressure as with average or low pressure, it doesn't matter. But heavy pressure matters A LOT!) that allows the killing of 2 yr old bucks and under. Now if you're in a hunt club with little pressure and no buck rules, then you're probably ok. But, if you're in a club that allows the shooting of 2 yr old bucks, then that's just about what you're going to have the opportunity to kill... 2 yr old bucks. That is if you see them because there won't be many of them.

At this point, leadership of the club needs to dictate a mature buck only rule and you have to have, as Coffee said, "like-minded" hunters that enjoy watching many immature buck during a season and killing one or two mature bucks as opposed to hardly ever seeing a buck and killing one or two immature bucks.

I'd find another club!!! You can't convince hunters who don't want to be convinced. Leave.