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14 point
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14 point
Joined: Sep 2002
Posts: 8,180 |
And the visual expression of a trait is the only thing you can go by to put the odds in your favor as much as is possible anyway.
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Joined: Sep 2002
Posts: 8,180
14 point
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14 point
Joined: Sep 2002
Posts: 8,180 |
In a perfect "All knowing" world, yes... But how do you know without a shadow of a doubt that the buck you are "culling" is a genetically "inferior" deer, past injury, poor diet or another of the 100 factors that could cause the less than desired antler growth that year ? Imagine trying to get 20 guys in a lease to ALL agree to what a "Cull" buck is. I can GUARANTEE you that unless you had a lease full of Brian Murphy's, Brian Kinkel's, Steve Ditchkoff's or Grant Woods, its NOT gonna happen... Agree with this. There is no way to look at a buck one season and tell that he's a cull buck. You need at least two season's worth of data so that injury, drought, etc can be eliminated for a deer's poor rack one year. Bottom line...I'd be willing to bet that 95% or more of what's shot as "cull bucks" should have never been shot under that premise of being a cull buck. Don't forget that many of those stressors...a drought for instance, would expose all the deer to the stress and not just an individual. I don't believe in the whole cull buck thing for the most part because it isn't about antlers to me, but if it is a heritable trait, you can manipulate it.
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Joined: Jan 2002
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10 point
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10 point
Joined: Jan 2002
Posts: 4,693 |
And the visual expression of a trait is the only thing you can go by to put the odds in your favor as much as is possible anyway. Your saying sounds good, but no, it is not if you don't know why you get what you got.
Last edited by wmd; 02/02/12 07:42 PM.
"Any way you look at it, most of the problems facing baboons can be expressed in two words: other baboons" -
D.L. Cheney and R.M. Seyfarth
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Joined: Jul 2011
Posts: 40,062 Likes: 139
Freak of Nature
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Freak of Nature
Joined: Jul 2011
Posts: 40,062 Likes: 139 |
Agreed Spoiler, I hunt private, owned property with limited pressure. Sometimes I loose sight of trying to manage a lease/club. When making post I need to try and remember, my management tactics will not work for everyone. I have hunted clubs in the past, trying to get more than 3-4 on the same page is tough.
"Why do you ask"?
Too many people spend money they don't have , on things they don't need, to impress people they don't know.
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Administrator
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Administrator
Joined: Dec 2001
Posts: 36,155 Likes: 40 |
In my opinion culling bucks is absolutely beneficial for your property but not for the reason most of you are debating. No matter how many acres you own, unless its high fenced, a high percentage of the bucks on your property will have home ranges that extend beyond your property lines. Lets say hypothetically you own 300 acres. You put out a few cameras and find that you have three 3.5 yr old bucks spending most of their time on your property. Well the buck with largest antlers is not necessarily the dominant buck of the three. In this scenario the buck with the least desirable rack may very well be the dominant buck when they turn 4.5 the next year and wont tolerate the presence of the other two bucks. By shooting the buck with the smallest rack you increase the odds of keeping the larger racked bucks on your property by reducing the competition for territory among their age class. It doesnt guarantee they will stay on your property but it helps. Think about it how many people have gotten pictures of 2 or 3 year old bucks some with potential and some not so much. a couple of years down the line you get a picture of the one of the "not so much" bucks and the bucks that had potential are never seen again. All bucks that you let reach maturity are going to establish a territory and defend it, why let scraggly poor racked bucks set up shop on your property and potentially run larger racked 3.5 year olds away. Thats why you cull not because you think you can manipulate the gene pool of the entire alabama whitetail population by shooting a buck with short brow tines. I agree 100% attitude is everything. I have spent a lot of time watching certain bucks and notice that everyone is different, just like people. Some only rub certain tree types, some make heavy rublines, some rarly leave sign... etc. The ones that take over and area do so mainly with an aggressive attitude. In my own experience, the bucks that have the worst temperment, the ones that act like bullies, are usually ones that have less than desirable antlers.
It takes a long time to grow an old friend.
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Joined: Sep 2002
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14 point
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14 point
Joined: Sep 2002
Posts: 8,180 |
And the visual expression of a trait is the only thing you can go by to put the odds in your favor as much as is possible anyway. Your saying sounds good, but no, it is not if you don't know why get what you got. Is antler development a heritable trait or not? And if not, why the high dollar price of semen from bucks with superior antlers?
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Joined: Jul 2011
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Freak of Nature
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Freak of Nature
Joined: Jul 2011
Posts: 40,062 Likes: 139 |
In my opinion culling bucks is absolutely beneficial for your property but not for the reason most of you are debating. No matter how many acres you own, unless its high fenced, a high percentage of the bucks on your property will have home ranges that extend beyond your property lines. Lets say hypothetically you own 300 acres. You put out a few cameras and find that you have three 3.5 yr old bucks spending most of their time on your property. Well the buck with largest antlers is not necessarily the dominant buck of the three. In this scenario the buck with the least desirable rack may very well be the dominant buck when they turn 4.5 the next year and wont tolerate the presence of the other two bucks. By shooting the buck with the smallest rack you increase the odds of keeping the larger racked bucks on your property by reducing the competition for territory among their age class. It doesnt guarantee they will stay on your property but it helps. Think about it how many people have gotten pictures of 2 or 3 year old bucks some with potential and some not so much. a couple of years down the line you get a picture of the one of the "not so much" bucks and the bucks that had potential are never seen again. All bucks that you let reach maturity are going to establish a territory and defend it, why let scraggly poor racked bucks set up shop on your property and potentially run larger racked 3.5 year olds away. Thats why you cull not because you think you can manipulate the gene pool of the entire alabama whitetail population by shooting a buck with short brow tines. I agree 100% attitude is everything. I have spent a lot of time watching certain bucks and notice that everyone is different, just like people. Some only rub certain tree types, some make heavy rublines, some rarly leave sign... etc. The ones that take over and area do so mainly with an aggressive attitude. In my own experience, the bucks that have the worst temperment, the ones that act like bullies, are usually ones that have less than desirable antlers. Good article in recent QDMA mag about what makes a dominate buck, attitude and body size. Age and antlers much less. They sawed the antlers off some of the bucks in pens. Good read.
"Why do you ask"?
Too many people spend money they don't have , on things they don't need, to impress people they don't know.
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Joined: Dec 2008
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10 point
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10 point
Joined: Dec 2008
Posts: 2,687 |
Frankie, I think the deer looks to be atleast 4.5/5.5 in that last years pic. Maybe even older. Since he is displaying a good bit more antler in that last year pic and a little more toned body composition I suspect he is older and going down. It could be due to habitat stress, but the other bucks in the pic don't seem to be suffering. In this years pics he appears to have a sagging posture and lots of loose hide, signs of lost muscle (aging). I guess that it is possible that injury or disease could be causal, but my gut tells me that he is an older deer. I am also assuming that this deer is from the Tallassee area and I am very familiar with deer from that area. What is your take on the deers age?
"Never met a deer that I didn't like" - QDMAV8R
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Booner
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Booner
Joined: Dec 2001
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In a perfect "All knowing" world, yes... But how do you know without a shadow of a doubt that the buck you are "culling" is a genetically "inferior" deer, past injury, poor diet or another of the 100 factors that could cause the less than desired antler growth that year ? Imagine trying to get 20 guys in a lease to ALL agree to what a "Cull" buck is. I can GUARANTEE you that unless you had a lease full of Brian Murphy's, Brian Kinkel's, Steve Ditchkoff's or Grant Woods, its NOT gonna happen... Agree with this. There is no way to look at a buck one season and tell that he's a cull buck. You need at least two season's worth of data so that injury, drought, etc can be eliminated for a deer's poor rack one year. Bottom line...I'd be willing to bet that 95% or more of what's shot as "cull bucks" should have never been shot under that premise of being a cull buck. Don't forget that many of those stressors...a drought for instance, would expose all the deer to the stress and not just an individual. I don't believe in the whole cull buck thing for the most part because it isn't about antlers to me, but if it is a heritable trait, you can manipulate it. I didn't say that it wasn't a heritable trait that couldn't be manipulated...or shouldn't be, for that matter. I simply stated that the average hunter can't judge a buck to be a "cull" in one year's worth of sightings. Too many other variables that could have affected that particular deer to be sure of it actually being a cull.
Last edited by hunterbuck; 02/02/12 09:01 PM.
"You think I care? Roll Damn Tide"
Have you tried Google?
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Joined: Jan 2002
Posts: 4,693
10 point
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10 point
Joined: Jan 2002
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And the visual expression of a trait is the only thing you can go by to put the odds in your favor as much as is possible anyway. Your saying sounds good, but no, it is not if you don't know why get what you got. Is antler development a heritable trait or not? And if not, why the high dollar price of semen from bucks with superior antlers? To what extent antlers are inherited (50/50 buck:doe or some other ratio?) is still an unknown according to the Readers Digest version of studies I have found. But what I meant by what I had written is without knowing what the DNA donors look like how do you know how big of an impact you are having by taking out the malformed buck? What if you got some does with riff-raff DNA running around on your property? Also, you keep bringing up the breeder bucks, which made me wonder - why do they have "management" or lesser cost bucks inside high-fence operations? Shouldn't they have shot those genes out since they in theory have absolute control over the DNA inside the fence? It would be interesting for a county or several contiguous counties to do a multi-year study where only spikes on one side or no brow bucks were killed to see what the outcome would be. Take the "bad" out and let the "good" racked bucks propagate their DNA and then see what the herd looks after several years.
"Any way you look at it, most of the problems facing baboons can be expressed in two words: other baboons" -
D.L. Cheney and R.M. Seyfarth
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Joined: Sep 2002
Posts: 8,180
14 point
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14 point
Joined: Sep 2002
Posts: 8,180 |
They have management bucks because they haven't shot those genes out but they are working toward it as best they can.
It doesn't mater if it is inherited 50/50 or some other ratio. I'm not saying how big of an impact you will have...I am just saying that you will have an impact.
How did we breed hogs to be fatter when we didn't know the swine genome. We bred fat hogs to fat hogs. Maybe some of the fat hogs were fat because of better feed instead of genetics but over time the genetics still change. Later leaner hogs were more desirable and the trend went back the other way.
By killing deer with a certain heritable trait, you aren't eradicating the trait, you are reducing it's incidence.
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Joined: Apr 2000
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Old Mossy Horns
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Old Mossy Horns
Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 19,289 Likes: 28 |
If cull bucks have poor racks , how do you identify cull DOES ?
Since 50% of traits come from the doe. How do you ID a cull doe ?
By killing the buck you have only solved 50% of the problem.See how ridiculous this is ?
The way to effect antlers is age and nourishment, not a trigger finger. one thing for sure the dead cull buck won't add to the problem . a cull might pass his genes to 5 does in one YEAR , just to say . thats adding his genes to ten fawns . to me it makes no sense to leave one in the herd ,,, a true cull !!!
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12 point
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12 point
Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 5,378 Likes: 10 |
I don't have anything to add to this thread, just wanted to post on it...... carry on... troy  That differs from your normal posts exactly how?  Just kidding I ain't gonna touch this with a 20' pole - I predict someones going to end up having to post their resume before this is over 
I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine
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Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 19,289 Likes: 28
Old Mossy Horns
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Old Mossy Horns
Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 19,289 Likes: 28 |
Frankie, I think the deer looks to be atleast 4.5/5.5 in that last years pic. Maybe even older. Since he is displaying a good bit more antler in that last year pic and a little more toned body composition I suspect he is older and going down. It could be due to habitat stress, but the other bucks in the pic don't seem to be suffering. In this years pics he appears to have a sagging posture and lots of loose hide, signs of lost muscle (aging). I guess that it is possible that injury or disease could be causal, but my gut tells me that he is an older deer. I am also assuming that this deer is from the Tallassee area and I am very familiar with deer from that area. What is your take on the deers age? imo ,,,, his 3 1/2 maybe 4 1/2 ,, this year . 11/12 season http://bamahunter.com/034.JPGhttp://bamahunter.com/035.JPGthe post above of the older deer is about 5 1/2 or 6 1/2 first year he was a 8 point two years before that he was a 7 point . he added a point out front on the right side
Last edited by Frankie; 02/03/12 01:37 AM.
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Old Mossy Horns
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Old Mossy Horns
Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 19,289 Likes: 28 |
I don't have anything to add to this thread, just wanted to post on it...... carry on... troy That differs from your normal posts exactly how? Just kidding I ain't gonna touch this with a 20' pole - I predict someones going to end up having to post their resume before this is over i finished 10th made it half way through 11th grade with a GED some years later . that my resume ..... lol
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Joined: Oct 2001
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10 point
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10 point
Joined: Oct 2001
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Hey 49er.... if a high percentage of bucks are dead as a result of hunting (your mgmt style) in a given... say.... 3000 acres, and a large percentage of does come into estrus in about the same time frame, and if not bred, go out of estrus and back into estrus 28-30 days later and this cycle repeats itself, how long do you think the rut will last? Don't you think the LONG rutting period is detrimental to the bucks or what's left of them? How about the late-born fawn? Don't you think that the late-born fawn will have to endure a less-than-optimal browse availability so late in the summer and early fall?.... when the stress period is high? How about the doe? Don't you think she's going to suffer trying to keep up her health while at the same time trying to take care of one, two or possibly three fawns? I doubt three b/c that points to a healthy herd.
You know... it's not worth the argument to convince you 49er.
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Booner
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Booner
Joined: Oct 2005
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bucktrot, That's all you got? Maybe you should post your resume'. Tell us where you got your degree in hockeyology.
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Joined: Sep 2002
Posts: 8,180
14 point
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14 point
Joined: Sep 2002
Posts: 8,180 |
I don't always agree with 49er but I don't think there is anything wrong with being a thinking man and questioning what people tell you...even people that claim to be an expert.
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Joined: Jan 2005
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14 point
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14 point
Joined: Jan 2005
Posts: 9,264 |
Here, maybe this will spell out some "research" done on the King Ranch and other biologists... I'm pretty sure those guys at the King Ranch have quite a bit more experience dealing with this issue than most of us... The bottom line is, if you own your own land, do whatever you want. If you're in a lease, there is no way on God's green earth that I would be willing to turn 15-20 guys loose to "determine" a "Cull" buck. I personally know 2-3 people that I would trust to do that in a lease that I paid money to join. http://www.ms-sportsman.com/details.php?id=306
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