Another AR Article
01-16-2009, 07:04 AM
#1
Nontypical Buck
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Join Date: Apr 2008
Posts: 3,879
Another AR Article
He's an interesting article by George Block. Note that he says that the average rack sizes of the buck that were scored recently, actually decreased.
http://www.observer-reporter.com/or/...01-11T00-33-54
1/11/2009
Many Things Factor Into Antler Size
George Block: Outdoors
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Odocoileus Virginianus has driven game biologists crazy since they have began managing them by using hunting as a primary tool. The whitetail deer is a very resilient animal capable of living in the vast forest lands of northern Pennsylvania and conversely in a small cemetery in the middle of a large metropolitan area.
Designed as twig-eating browsers they are equally adept at home eating tulips in the back yard or corn in a farmer's field. While thought of as a forest creature they prefer the hardwoods to be interspersed with secondary growth for cover and food.
As their numbers are trimmed each hunting season their reproductive rate enables them to bounce back from all but the most heavy over-hunting. Like all mammals, the deer require three major things to survive, food, cover and drink.
Everyone understands that to achieve body and antler size potential a deer has to have the proper nutrition available. It has also been demonstrated that a deer's size and antler development can be affected by the nutrition available to the mother as she carried the embryo. However there are other factors that have an effect on the quality of the deer, those being age and genetics.
Anyone who has visited Assateague Island has more than likely spotted those little 50-pound deer feeding in the marshes. You can force-feed those animals and they will never be a 150-pound northern whitetail. Its genetics won't allow that to happen.
Age, genetics and food form a triangle of importance for quality deer and if one collapses the triangle will fail. It's that simple. In a copy of the magazine Quality Whitetails, it says, "Certain Management strategies such as selective harvest may be feasible for improving antler quality in managed populations.
"For instance, a manager might protect large-antlered bucks and remove bucks with poor antler quality and quickly - within 10 years - produce bigger deer. On the other hand, if one harvested all large-antlered bucks then the population might be 'high graded,' resulting in decreased antler quality."
There are many facets of deer management that are not as simple as they first appear. For many years we thought, myself included, that timbering, which created second growth, was good for deer.
There is no doubt that this is true, but like all things, delving deeper brings up the question of long-term benefits. Most timbering is done by cutting mature trees which eliminates mast.
Mast can be a vital food for wildlife and while browse can be regenerated in a short time span mast takes much longer. Again we find an underlying, although maybe unimportant, issue dealing with the indiscriminate cutting of trees.
There is little argument that deer numbers across the mountains of northern Pennsylvania are low. There certainly should be less competition for the available food and antlers are or should be larger.
Yet they still have not reached true trophy size. This can be shown by the fact that most, if not all, of the book bucks are still coming from the farm counties.
Overall numbers are down to less than half of what was scored in 2000 and average scores have dropped just shy of 10 inches.
Does this pronounce a death ring for trophy bucks here at home? Of course not, we have too many places that cannot be hunted and many places that are mini-managed by the owner.
Another oddity appears when one looks at the Boone & Crockett record book. Of the top 13 typical bucks from Pennsylvania, 10 of them came from the mountains.
The 10 that came from the mountains were shot back when mountain deer populations were extremely high. Our top buck came from Bradford County in the early '40s when the McKean County town of Ludlow fenced the town to protect it from the high-deer density.
Remains of the fence can still be seen. Another oddity is that three of the 10 mountain bucks came from Clarion County. All were taken back in the '40s and '50s.
Sometimes things aren't as they appear on the surface.
My thoughts on antler restrictions could be summed up by the bold type lines in an article in the latest issue of Newsweek Magazine, "When hunters target a species, you end up letting a bunch of losers do the mating."
http://www.observer-reporter.com/or/...01-11T00-33-54
1/11/2009
Many Things Factor Into Antler Size
George Block: Outdoors
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Odocoileus Virginianus has driven game biologists crazy since they have began managing them by using hunting as a primary tool. The whitetail deer is a very resilient animal capable of living in the vast forest lands of northern Pennsylvania and conversely in a small cemetery in the middle of a large metropolitan area.
Designed as twig-eating browsers they are equally adept at home eating tulips in the back yard or corn in a farmer's field. While thought of as a forest creature they prefer the hardwoods to be interspersed with secondary growth for cover and food.
As their numbers are trimmed each hunting season their reproductive rate enables them to bounce back from all but the most heavy over-hunting. Like all mammals, the deer require three major things to survive, food, cover and drink.
Everyone understands that to achieve body and antler size potential a deer has to have the proper nutrition available. It has also been demonstrated that a deer's size and antler development can be affected by the nutrition available to the mother as she carried the embryo. However there are other factors that have an effect on the quality of the deer, those being age and genetics.
Anyone who has visited Assateague Island has more than likely spotted those little 50-pound deer feeding in the marshes. You can force-feed those animals and they will never be a 150-pound northern whitetail. Its genetics won't allow that to happen.
Age, genetics and food form a triangle of importance for quality deer and if one collapses the triangle will fail. It's that simple. In a copy of the magazine Quality Whitetails, it says, "Certain Management strategies such as selective harvest may be feasible for improving antler quality in managed populations.
"For instance, a manager might protect large-antlered bucks and remove bucks with poor antler quality and quickly - within 10 years - produce bigger deer. On the other hand, if one harvested all large-antlered bucks then the population might be 'high graded,' resulting in decreased antler quality."
There are many facets of deer management that are not as simple as they first appear. For many years we thought, myself included, that timbering, which created second growth, was good for deer.
There is no doubt that this is true, but like all things, delving deeper brings up the question of long-term benefits. Most timbering is done by cutting mature trees which eliminates mast.
Mast can be a vital food for wildlife and while browse can be regenerated in a short time span mast takes much longer. Again we find an underlying, although maybe unimportant, issue dealing with the indiscriminate cutting of trees.
There is little argument that deer numbers across the mountains of northern Pennsylvania are low. There certainly should be less competition for the available food and antlers are or should be larger.
Yet they still have not reached true trophy size. This can be shown by the fact that most, if not all, of the book bucks are still coming from the farm counties.
Overall numbers are down to less than half of what was scored in 2000 and average scores have dropped just shy of 10 inches.
Does this pronounce a death ring for trophy bucks here at home? Of course not, we have too many places that cannot be hunted and many places that are mini-managed by the owner.
Another oddity appears when one looks at the Boone & Crockett record book. Of the top 13 typical bucks from Pennsylvania, 10 of them came from the mountains.
The 10 that came from the mountains were shot back when mountain deer populations were extremely high. Our top buck came from Bradford County in the early '40s when the McKean County town of Ludlow fenced the town to protect it from the high-deer density.
Remains of the fence can still be seen. Another oddity is that three of the 10 mountain bucks came from Clarion County. All were taken back in the '40s and '50s.
Sometimes things aren't as they appear on the surface.
My thoughts on antler restrictions could be summed up by the bold type lines in an article in the latest issue of Newsweek Magazine, "When hunters target a species, you end up letting a bunch of losers do the mating."
