Cry babies, cry babies, cry babies, waa, waa, waa,...
By god I believe everyone should think like me because I want them to and I want to kill trophies by god. Enough is enough!!!!!!
I manage for mature bucks and we dont shoot anything we are not going to mount. I picked up 200 acres adjoining me this year and I paid the landowner $3 more per acre than what it was actually worth. I did it to keep some yahoo from picking up that tiny little 200 acre piece and putting out a couple corn piles and killing 5 or 6 of the good 2 and 3 year old bucks that we are letting grow. I dang sure didnt need the additional acreage but it was worth it to us to overpay, by $600 on that particular piece, just to get the previous corn hunting, shoot anything group gone and to keep someone else from coming in and negatively impacting what we and our other 3 large landholding neighbors are trying to do.
It sucks for sure but more and more people are doing it and it is becoming the norm. The shoot everything crowd says they dont want to trophy hunt but they would be the first ones to ride a trophy all over town in their truck bragging about it if they did manage to kill a good one. It is my opinion that most dont manage or trophy hunt because they cannot afford to tie up large parcels and the expense that comes with managing the land and wildlife. People complain about lease prices and I completely understand and hate the current high rates/acre but the shoot anything group is hurting themselves more than anything or anyone else. Guys that control large acreages and have the money to do it are not going to just sit back and let a bunch of "shoot every buck they see" guys surround their highly managed properties and kill all the deer they are passing. It ends up creating a bad situation of limited opportunity for the guys that just want to hunt, but when the normal guy doing what he wants to do starts to prohibit other guys from doing what they want and are trying to do, someone will always end up as the odd man out. It doesn't have to be that way. The unfortunate thing is that if the shoot anything guys would back off on all the killing, they would have some great opportunities to enjoy some prime hunting that they otherwise could not afford, due to the prohibitive cost of obtaining a 2000-5000 acre lease. They could piggyback off the larger landowners efforts and enjoy the same quality of hunting on these smaller, more affordable 100 and 200 acre parcels, but to do so, they would/will have to adjust their mindset to fit in.
This is just my opinion but I can promise you that I honestly think that I could take a shoot anything guy, that is used to hunting small un-managed property and seeing maybe 2 or 3 young rack bucks a year and killing them all, for a couple weekends in a row on my place and sit with him and allow him to see multiple 3 yr old rack bucks (in all probability, bigger bucks than he has ever killed) feeding in a field in the broad daylight and Id' be willing to bet I could convert him and he would agree to get on our program and I could let him have that 200 acres. IMO, the problem is that most people have not experienced hunting on a highly managed property where it is really easy to see multiple 1-3yr or even 4 yr old bucks on a regular basis. It seems unattainable for them and it will continue to be as long as they maintain their I'm gonna kill 20 deer a year attitude.
And before someone brings it up, kids get multiple passes on bucks as they work their way up to the same shooting standards that the adults have. You cant expect a young kid, who's only killed a few does, to pass up 100-110" 2 and 3 yr old 8 points while waiting on a 5 yr old and we dont make them.
There's got to be come common ground somewhere but everyone is too selfish to find it without a bunch of state imposed rules. GA has a complete county that is trophy managed. When it was first proposed, there was a huge backlash from the shoot any buck crowd. Now those same guys are the biggest proponents of letting young deer walk and everyone, large landowners and small are reaping the benefits of quality herd management and loving it. But they absolutely squalled like babies and were kicking and screaming those first couple years. Look up Dooley and Macon counties. By the way, GA has a 2 buck and 10 doe limit. Statewide, no exceptions. The length of their firearms season is similar to ours with the only difference being you can only kill 12 deer a year in GA whereas you can kill 121 in Bama. Go figure why our hunting is suffering.
