Their ideas looked good on paper back in the day but I'm not so sure that those ideas have done very well on a state level. The management that big landowners buy into is not necessarily good for every hunter in the state to subscribe to.....I think you gotta look at that from a different viewpoint. I dont even know that its the best strategy for the big players.

QDMA works fine when properly followed/applied. in a property specific manner, and used as a specific management tool in a defined management plan for the given property. The problem comes when QDMA is applied on a global scale, across an entire state, where 95% of the hunters in the state define "deer management" as hunting as much as they possibly can and killing as many deer as they can per hunt and per season. At that point it is detrimental to the state and herd, but once people get a taste for being allowed to shoot every deer they see, it's real hard to put that Genie back in the bottle.

I'll be interested to hear Matt Brock's perspective on this one.

Exactly……..There’s the “idea” and then there’s the reality of what that idea looks like applied to the bigger landscape where corn piles and cell cams and 40 acre properties exist. I would suggest that even for the bigger clubs and landowners the consequences outweigh the benefit when every buck that reaches 3 years old is being targeted by the factors mentioned.

Give it some real thought…….Weren’t we better off when clubs were 8 pt or better…………or 125 or better……..etc????……..We all like to take that 8 pt or better rule and trash it because…. “What about that big ol’ 5 point or 7 pt, etc that we cant shoot!?!”…….Instead of looking at it like……”Yeah, look at all those bucks that don’t get shot inside of that square”……How many more bucks made it another year back in the day because that club was 8 pt or better??
This all just a matter of “the masses” being persuaded that this way or that way is better.

I agree with abolt, they's places where does need killing and places like mine where they don't at least not on the scale that's legal...we've got nice bucks around here but deer in general is low numbers...

QDMA is fine is the hunters implementation that’s can be the problem. Like Outback always said. Leave to humans to mess it up. QDMA printed the idea a balanced deer herd. Not mass killing if does it trying to grow trophy bucks. That was hunters screwing it up. Like many things folks take their personal experience as the only meaning.

When I spoke of management I considered a 5000 acre hunting club surrounded by vast hunting landscapes.
Hogwild always mentioned it from a 40 acre management place. Killing 2 does in 40 acres is no big until 10 surrounding landowners kill 2 per 40 acre tract.

Gotta look at the big picture.

Hunters once again misunderstood the actual implementation of what QDMA was about.

I’ll admit I took it too far in not understanding how to discuss it.

QDM works if applied correctly. Our food plots brought our neighbors deer to us not corn. I don't believe you could do it now since corn is legal. Our target deer was 3 years old and older. This was in Conecuh County and you have to be realistic about what you have to work with. You can learn a lot about deer and better ways to kill them by watching and not killing them.

Absolutely true. The last 10 years I hunted deer hard I learned a lot by observing. A good friend that loves deer hunting couldn’t understand watch. Used to kinda take jabs at me for watching deer. Now he’s a deer watcher and has kill more BIG bucks since doing so

Part of the problem, is people confuse QDMA with Trophy deer management. These are 2 completely different things. QDMA was all about letting yearling bucks walk and controlling the doe population. People turned that into annihilating doe deer and only shooting 4.5 y/o or older bucks.

Good to see you posting Blumsden……

Only post when I see something that interest me. RTR

Cnc I believe qdma was a big thing before my time. Mind giving me a short run down on the idea?

I hunt an area of small to medium sized private properties and if used to be brown its down, I mean no one ever saw any decent bucks. All the neighbors in a 2 mile area all agreed to 8 pt. or better as a start. Within 2 years a whole nother ballgame, after 3 or 4 years it is amazing the bucks we have, totally amazing. Let em go, let em grow, very simple and it works.

I’m not sure I remember all of the finer details of how everything has unfolded over the years……Some other folks will have to jump in here and fill in………

Basically after restocking up until the early 90’s you had either meat hunters or big buck hunters…..and everyone looked at does as something you just didn’t shoot except very sparingly for a few days around Christmas. Deer populations were booming in a lot of places and some folks started hollering overpopulation…… key word being some there.

The non-profit Quality Deer Management Association was formed as an entity to teach the masses “the science” of deer and “fix” this issue that some said we had pf too many deer. I don’t remember if they actually worked with the state DCNR’s or if it was just rumored that they were the ones pushing for the new rules like “2 does a day”…..To make a long story short they preached the ideas of “manage does and shoot bucks according to age class”…..Someone will have to fill in the history of all of this.

I think if I were over a club again I’d go with a buck rule of he’s either 125+ or anything you want to mount. I don’t think I’d do the age thing anymore.

CNC I don’t think 8pt or better clubs are better off than clubs that have a 4+year old rule. Most clubs that are trophy managed could kill a pile of 8 points. Most would be 2-3 year olds. I know in the club I just got out of we could kill probably 25 8pts a season if we wanted to. We were shooting 4+year old bucks and we would kill 4-5 bucks a year. Most of the older deer we had labeled shooters in cam pics were not killed. Probably less than half were killed.

So which concept is better for age structure?

I fully agree. My mind set is if it’s big enough to do a Pedestal mount and be a wow deer for anyone that sees it then it’s a green light if not, wait till next year.

I think that’s a great idea until someone shoots a 3.5 year old 122” deer.

It might work better if everyone in the club shared cam pics and put the younger high scoring bucks on a no kill list. Heavy fine if you shoot one on the no kill list. The problem is getting members to share information. That’s hard to do in some clubs