Originally Posted by UncleHuck
Respectfully, Matt - If I have to go multiple years without shooting a buck on my hunting land in hopes of an older deer living through neighbors, poachers, log trucks, disease, and coyotes, then I ain't interested in holding out for a 5-6-7 year old buck. We had a couple of older bucks on camera early this season, and never saw them in daylight. We did put two younger bucks in the freezer, because they were the ones who showed up. We watched at least 4 more young deer multiple times without shooting, as we had meat in the freezer.

If I controlled thousands of acres, sign me up. If I'm only hunting a few hundred acres (or less), or public land, then I'm shooting legal bucks when I see them and have freezer space. Part of hunting for me is putting deer in the freezer. I don't believe I have ever shot an illegal buck, or one that violated rules at a club/property where I was a guest, but I have shot some that folks said "he would have been a good one next year". Yeah, if he didn't trot off this 1200 acres with his 195 lb self and die somewhere else.

I have been fortunate to take some great deer, both low/no fence as well as high fence. I still try to shoot at least one legal buck every year for the freezer, and I am not personally willing to have 1+ dry years on purpose in the hope that a decent buck gets better and doesn't die for some other reason.
That’s my point. Why I had the “but” in there. AL is plenty capable of producing absolute giants, but so many variables prevent it from being a reality for most hunters. I don’t expect ppl to do what it takes to get them there because of the many variables you mentioned. However, it can be done on smaller acreages. It just takes cooperation from multiple landowners. I don’t give away locations for obvious reasons, but I know of one cooperative this year, that has taken 11 bucks from 4-7 years of age, as well as a couple younger bucks that kids took, and they still have quite a few left. It’s 2200 acres and includes several different landowners and families. Getting past the initial hurdle of “There’s no way that deer makes it to next year” was a challenge, but now they’re all seeing what can be achieved with cooperation and it’s incredible. They still lose a lot of bucks to neighbors. That’s going to happen. Unfortunately it’s often the best ones in the 2-3 yo age class, but they’re still producing about as high a percentage of mature bucks as anybody around on free range deer.

With that said, yes sometimes you gotta fill the freezer and ppl hunt for different reasons. Everybody isn’t interested in mature deer. They’ve got the same rights, privileges and opportunities as anyone, and should enjoy their hunting.