Here's what I believe. If your going to call a 4+ yr old buck with undesirable horn chacteristics a "cull" thats fine by me, I've always just said they were mature deer and am always happy to kill mature deer. However, I believe using the term "cull" on a deer that is relatively young that you have only watched for one year is an incorrect statement. For one, you have no way of knowing what caused the said deer to display a specific horn characteristic for that specific year. I have seen plenty of deer, like others have said, that may have a good side and a single beam on the other or doesn't have browtines or any other undersirable trait, turn into to some really good deer when given time to age. The irregular horns could be from a genetic defect or it could simply be from an injury, you have know way of knowing this from a single citing or from one year of pictures.
Even if you do decide to take the 2 1/2 yr old buck that displays undesirable characteristics, I don't beleive you've done anything to change to genetic make up of your herd. Even if you kill every one that you see like that your not going to kill them all, your not even going to come close to even seeing half of them. Like others have said,the other half of the gene is carried in the doe so I'm not sure your plan to irradicate that. Deer in general can travel a long way and even if you kill a "cull" buck there will be another one right there to take his place. I don't believe you've done a thing to change the gene pool long or short term and your doing nothing but wasting buck tags trying to accomplish an unrealistic goal.
When I say "goal" I'm assuming your trying to kill big bucks since your "culling" the undesirable young bucks. I just think that there's a lot better ways to improve the quality of a deer herd besides culling bucks. Instead of spending your time "culling" bucks, why not spend it improving the quality of the habitat that your hunting. Doing that and letting deer age to maturity will provide way better results in the long run in my opinion.
That is 1 BRAZILLION PERCENT CORRECT... Couldn't have said it better myself. I WISH I had about 3 more in our lease that could explain this to other members besides just myself trying to get them to understand that... Excellent Excellent post...
And off topic a little but you are right down the road from me if you're in Pace...
