Aldeer.com Forums Alabama Deer Talk Serious Deer Talk Forum Cull no Cull, not this again, shut the freak up

Is there a study that shows that a screwed up rack buck will only have offspring that have screwed up racks?

Don't know how that type study could be done on free range deer.

It's be awesome to know tho 😃

I’m just speaking about the overall idea really of how a deer herd responds to having some balance. How having decent buck to doe ratios helps take some stress off the younger deer and prevents all the bucks from having to go through the rigors associated with a rut that’s really drawn out. Also how they were just trying to show how the deer herd responds to being in balance with the habitat….things like having twins, heavier body weights, etc…..The one area where I think they failed in this regard…. and maybe this is just my personal opinion about things…..but its how they didn’t explain that your herd doesn’t have to throw off twins for every doe or meet a certain body weight criteria. If I want to have a higher deer population and body weights are lower as a result then that’s fine too up to a point. They should have taught it as a gauge of determining which direction you’re headed and how to tweak things when needed so that you never reach critical levels in either direction…..To me it all came out as something that was black and white and like there’s a certain utopian place to manage that we should all seek to reach. There’s not. There’s a lot of clubs and properties out there that had the potential of actually holding more deer that whacked a bunch of does just because they perceived doe management as a part of every situation. Hell, at this point we could make a real good argument that there are very few situations where anyone HAS to shoot does period. You just need to have an understanding of the whole picture and not look to a one size fits all approach. I think they meant to help with that understanding but instead everyone perceived needing to do it one certain way.

hmm, ok. You referenced the buck to doe ratio specifically as being sound and correct, I just figured you knew what it was they said.

No...I was just getting at the reasons for why someone might need to shoot does as they were explaining it. I've always agreed with the approach of educating the public on how things work but there's a fine line there though in how you use it to direct their behavior....whether intentionally or on accident. I don't think that meant for it to go the way it did...I think they likely just didn't foresee the way it would misinterpreted and misused

CNC about 25 years ago we hosted 3 QDMA seminars in Troy. The common thread they had was to shoot does. It was usually ask if a doe and two doe yearlings came into the plot which one should you shoot, the answer was to shoot all of them. no talk about deer population, just shoot all does. They usually wanted to make a quick presentation and eat and they get the auction going, a lot like the Wild Turkey bunch.

Seems like it would be easy to do that study on captive deer. Get a buck with a messed up rack, spike on one side, rack on other. Put him in a pen with 10 different does and see what the buck offspring look like.

Hold up now

Oh yeah...I've been to those banquets before. Trust me there no love loss there. Maybe I'm remembering it wrong. I do remember it snowballing into being more and lots of things being said like what you describe but I thought I remember the original message to just be about the overall way things worked. It was when things like someone asking questions about which doe to shoot with the assumption that they for sure needed shoot them that it went astray. The answer to shoot all of them wouldn't be wrong if / was needed to take some out. I really think the coyote situation made the whole thing worse. Things wouldn't have went nearly as bad if had never spread and boomed or if it had already done so well ahead of he doe shooting mess happening. Folks got the wrong impression though right at the same time as the coyote boom and everything was hit with a double whammy

Their genes are not out of the herd. The only legitimate reason to "cull" a buck from the herd is to take a mouth to feed out of the herd. You're doing nothing for the genetics. The bucks you removed had a mother and daddy that passed on the same genetics as the bucks you killed, and the bucks you killed had passed on theirs before you killed them.

They will no longer be ADDING genes to the herd.

***********

This is about MATH.
So many of you guys cannot see the forest from the trees.

Genetics is about MATH.
It is a MATH issue/MATH problem.

You have less of something that is a MINUS.
More of something is a PLUS.

High grading is FACT.
Ipso facto low grading is a FACT.

If everyone low graded every year and otherwise did not shoot a buck until it was at least 4 years old the overall antler genetics of the State
would improve over time.

What we have had the last 50 years is people doing the exact opposite.
That is why there are so many scabby inferior antler traits in the Alabama gene pool.

[quote=280REM The only legitimate reason to "cull" a buck from the herd is to take a mouth to feed out of the herd. [/quote]

That's is incorrect .

Beside the FACT of REDUCING bad antler genes from the herd, killing crappy scabby bucks that will never
amount to anything antler wise - not only saves food for other deer, but it opens space, bedding, cover and breeding
opportunities for superior antlered bucks.


**********

There are a lot of cattle farmers on here.

Do any of you go looking for the most inferior bull to breed your cows?

Do horse farmers pay big money to have the weakest, smallest worst stallion breed their mares?

Well if there is any merit to that way of thinking at all then lets stop for a minute and think about how the “good genes” are being treated…..Aren’t we taking that trophy gene out of the herd if we shoot that nice 10 pt?? Any of y’all letting it walk to keep it in the herd?? By the logic being used here we should have already taken that trophy gene out of the herd by now if it was possible to do so shouldn’t we have??….. since we’ve likely shot every one that’s ever walked??…..many even at a young age….most of them likely

I'm interested to hear how this gets explained......

The dominant gene wants to get passed on, moreso, than the recessive gene. That's why both parents have to possess the recessive gene for it to get passed on.

I understand that concept but how does that apply to what I’m asking? Why would you think that a high scoring rack would be a dominant trait anyways? Humans are the ones who put emphasis on that…I don’t think nature does.

Nature absolutely does. The biggest and strongest, typically, do the breeding. They're also typically the healthiest. Why do you think that doesn't exist?

Because I think body size would have a far greater impact on what you’re talking about than whether they had a spike on one side or a perfect 10 pt frame….I don’t know if attitude is any way somehow passed on but that more important as well than rack size and score. Antler characteristics do not provide any evolutionary advantage. The only thing I could even possibly come up with is that if the doe were more attracted to big racks but I don’t think it plays out that way….Even if antlers did somehow play a role in an evolutionary “survival of the fittest” type way….aren’t many of these cull hunters shooting the big SOOS buck and claiming that he likely whipped all of the other bucks. I mean wouldn’t the one in the pic I posted have the advantage there and therefore carry the best gene to pass on?? Nature and evolution isn't choosing for and trying to produce one fiddy's….those traits only matter to hunters

Very simple.
.

The good 10 point was allowed to spread his good antler genes around when he was 2 and 3 years old.
Maybe even as a 4 year old.

What 90% of Alabama hunters do is kill that good antlered deer when he is 2 years old.