Originally Posted by 2Dogs
Originally Posted by Pwyse
Well it might get crowded. It might not. Depends on your neighbors. That’s why you do it for 5 years and record deer weights.

Well after 5 years of changing your harvest restrictions on bucks, you look at the results and see if your goals were accomplished and then make a decision on what to do. It’s not rocket science man.

If you want to chase your tail every year go ahead. But just because it didn’t work in year 2 doesn’t mean after 5 years your goal won’t be accomplished. Think of it like stocks. There are some ups and downs each year but you need to look and see if your management decisions are trending towards your goals or not.

If a club has been killing 6 points are better for 10 years and then they put restrictions on buck harvests and say you can only shoot 5 year old bucks now… do you think they need to make the decision to keep that rule after 1 or 2 season? Of course not. They need to do it for 5 seasons and then look at the results.

Give your management decisions time to have an impact on the deer herd. An impact that is above the small up and down swings that happen from year to year.

The larger your property , the less the neighbors matter. Yeah , it ain't rocket science on bucks , if you want bigguns, don't shoot them until they are 4yo or older. If a food plot mixture or fertilizer rate isn't working , it doesn't take 5 years to figure that out. Records are fine , but it doesn't take 5 years to determine if you need to make changes. I'm too old to wait in 5 years increments to make changes. laugh

FYI , I hunt a fairly large private tract , surrounded by some good neighbors. It's not a club . I'm the dictator, manager and main hunter, I've hunted it exclusively since 1987.

OK , I've reread your posts, it seems to me your 5 years is not a rolling 5 years but in 5 year increments before making a change. 5 years in the whitetail world is a long time. Let's say you have 1,000 acres , with about 500 of it in mature, ready to cut hardwoods . Hardwood prices go waaaay up, do you not cut the timber and make perhaps a couple hundred thousand more $ just because it'll increase carrying capacity and mess up the 5 year plan? A long range plan is fine , but habitat and deer are fluid , you have to go with the flow sometimes.


No you cut the timber lol. Ain’t none of this worth more than a couple hundred grand lol.

You are right it can be fluid. What I’m saying is there are a lot of reasons it is fluid. Some of those reasons we may know, some we may not. I try to give whatever change we’ve decided to make longer than one or two seasons is all I’m saying. I like 5. That’s not to say that if there is overwhelming proof that what you are doing is really bad for your goals that you can’t change it. But most of the time you need more than a couple of samples to understand if your change is working.

Here’s an example. We had a guy in our club that was sitting on a powerline hunting. The food plot across the river on someone else’s property had a spinner feeder on it. He saw a good mature buck in the plot eating at the feeder. Next year we all bought spinners for each plot on our 2500 acre club. He was pushing this idea. That year no one saw a mature buck, or got a pic of a mature buck eating at a spinner feeder. So they got rid of them. Abandoned the idea and wasted the money spent on them. Our bucks won’t eat at them was the consensus. But I had pics of bucks eating out of them at a buddy’s club right up the road. I talked them into committing to using them for 5 years. Now we have mature bucks trying to spin the feeder with their nose and eat all the corn in 3 days lol. Sometimes you have to give the plan a few years to see the results. Or lack there of.

That’s all I’m saying.