Management bucks article

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hillhunter
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Management bucks article

Postby hillhunter » Fri Nov 07, 2014 12:42 pm

This is a pretty long article but well worth the read IMO. I especially thought the last piece about bucks with spikes on one side was really interesting.



By: Lindsay Thomas Jr.

Like a toothache, it began as a minor irritation that I could live with. Gradually it became more persistent and noticeable. Lately, it’s a major distraction, and I’ve decided it’s time to say something about it. My tolerance was almost gone as the 2006 hunting season approached. Then a series of events wiped out what was left of it.

First, a neighbor who doesn’t practice Quality Deer Management showed me the sawed-off skull plate of a yearling 3-pointer. “I knew he needed to go,” he told me. “I shot him to keep him from breeding.”

Next, I encountered a set of written hunting-club rules that told members to pass young bucks until they had at least 6 total points… but to shoot all “old 4-pointers” and any “ratty horned” bucks for the betterment of the population.

I started to pay more attention to the toothache. I began filtering the chatter of our deer-hunting culture for mention of words and phrases like culling, genetics, management buck, and inferior. I found what you may also have noticed: these words are everywhere. They are commonly used and discussed, and many hunters are actively “culling” bucks as casually as if they were harvesting does or planting food plots.

Most recently, I was in the dentist’s chair, rendered mute by the tools and hoses in my mouth, unable to reply as my hygienist told me that she had recently started deer hunting with her husband. The two of them had gained sole access to a 500-acre property that had seldom been hunted and had too many deer. She had killed her first two deer this season, a doe and a spike. The spike, her husband had explained to her, needed to be removed from the gene pool because his antlers didn’t fork. She was fascinated by the science behind deer management and proud to have been a part of a QDM effort.

I was physically prevented from explaining to my hygienist the many reasons why culling bucks is counterproductive in the situation she had described to me. It was a symbolic moment: I almost never tell someone that their ideas about culling are questionable. I just listen and nod. I don’t judge or correct. After all, I’m not a biologist. But right then I resolved to change that, because someone needs to speak up. In all of the examples I mentioned here, the hunters are not in situations that call for removing “cull bucks” or “management bucks.” Even if they were in a culling situation, most of them misunderstand the concept and are applying it incorrectly. They all mean well and think they are doing the right thing. They are interested in the science and in taking an active role as a deer manager. These are good things. But someone needs to tell them they are doing something that is at best ineffective and more likely destructive, because the problem is growing.

Most of the hunters I encounter who are misinformed about management bucks are not QDMA members. But QDMA members are leaders in teaching other hunters about sound deer management. There are two take-home points I want to convey clearly in this article so that members can help get the word out:

1. Shooting management or cull bucks has not been shown to improve antler genetics unless you hunt inside a high fence. It is all but impossible to improve antler quality through selective removal of “inferior antler genetics” in free-roaming deer populations. Thus, I believe the justification that the majority of culling hunters are using is baseless.

2. Under the genuine application of culling, only a small fraction of deer managers are at the level of achievement with their deer program where culling is likely to have a benefit, or at least not cause harm to a potentially successful QDM program.

Who Created This Problem?

Why are so many hunters who don’t need to be worried about shooting management bucks worried about shooting management bucks? To answer this question, we have to go back to the place where the culling tool originated, where it is better understood, and where it is most often used correctly – Texas.

Multiple television channels now offer full- or part-time hunting programming. Turn on any one of these channels, and you are likely to find a show featuring a host or guest hunter at a commercial ranch or plantation, often in Texas, where the quarry is a management buck. Because television hunting shows predominantly feature commercial hunting properties, management-buck hunts end up being common, while the properties and situations that call for shooting management bucks are decisively uncommon among us viewers.

The average viewer is left with the impression that top-notch hunting properties shoot management bucks, but you seldom see a program that explains why and how to do this. It’s a complex topic, and there is seldom time in the average television program to go into detail. Sometimes television hunters really muddy the water by throwing in the word genetics. As in, “Removing this management buck from the herd will help improve our genetics.”

What about biologists and researchers? Some wildlife professionals believe that culling works, while others do not. But while most professionals are busy debating each other, they have overlooked the message they are transmitting to everyday deer hunters like you and me. For us, the question is not “Does culling work?” The question is, “Does culling work for me?” In debating the first question, most experts have failed to address the second one.

“Culling is a step that’s near the top of the management ladder. You have to climb the steps below that first,” said Dr. Mickey Hellickson, chief wildlife biologist at the King Ranch in South Texas, whose research is breaking new ground with respect to culling of free-ranging deer populations. “But everybody wants to skip on up to that step, because it means shooting more bucks. Shooting bucks is fun, and the idea of shooting more bucks is an easy management technique to sell. I think it’s widely abused. A lot of hunters are shooting whatever buck they want, and once it’s on the ground they can figure out a way to justify it from a management standpoint.”

This has had fatal consequences for many undeserving bucks. Bucks with more antler points on one beam than the other. Bucks with strange-shaped antlers of all kinds. Bucks that actually injured their antler or antlers in the velvet phase and might have produced a normal set of antlers the next year. Bucks that present almost any other physical blemish you can name that can be chalked up to “genetics.” I call these deer mis-management bucks. They are deer shot for supposedly beneficial purposes but that generally amount to setbacks if QDM is the goal. Recall the club that encourages the shooting of “ratty horned” bucks and consider that in 2006 they killed 15 bucks on 2,000 acres, only four of which were considered quality bucks. This club is already challenged by the fact that it is located in low-quality habitat, and if each year’s buck harvest is like last year’s, they will never see appreciable success with their QDM efforts.

What Our Best Science Says About Culling

If there is any place in North America where deer managers could make an improvement in antler quality through culling, and simultaneously document the results scientifically, it is on the King Ranch in South Texas. On the 825,000-acre King Ranch, goals and methods exceed QDM intensity and extend into a higher range, Trophy Deer Management (TDM). About eight years ago, Mickey and his research partners at the Caesar Kleberg Wildlife Research Institute and the Texas Parks & Wildlife Department set out to examine culling in a well-documented, scientific study. They are currently analyzing the eighth and final year of data in the study. Mickey summarized the results:

“Over eight years of very intensive culling, we weren’t able to show any benefits in terms of improvement in antler quality.”

Other Articles: Why We Can't Manage Deer Genetics

Let’s back up and look at how the study worked in detail. To begin with, researchers first established culling criteria that were specifically designed for the population being managed, and this was done through ongoing live deer capture for multiple studies, a massive effort known as the South Texas Buck Capture Project. More than 4,000 individual bucks have been captured with a net-gun fired from a helicopter, tagged, aged, released and captured again in subsequent years.

“Based on recapture data of known-age bucks (deer that were captured as fawns or yearlings when there is no error in aging by toothwear) we were able to determine antler characteristics for each age class and identify what truly is a cull buck that’s never going to be trophy quality,” Mickey said.

The data helped researchers establish the criteria a buck had to meet to be considered a cull. Because of their intensive management program, they set an extremely liberal target for culls that included any 1.5-year-old buck with less than 6 antler points and any buck 2.5 years or older with less than 9 antler points. This was applied on a 9,496-acre treatment area. Meanwhile, a nearby control area of 9,429 acres received no culling effort.

The treatment area represented an almost perfect scenario for culling:

Advanced QDM or TDM success at the start of culling.
Well-studied population with solid data.
Liberal definition of a “cull.”
Massive acreage – nearly 10,000 acres to be specific.
Plenty of manpower, time and regulatory opportunity to hunt down and kill as many culls as possible.

Very few hunters could re-create these optimum conditions on their lands, especially the property size and the intensive time and manpower that went into finding and shooting cull bucks. Yet, despite optimum conditions and opportunity, the expected results did not materialize. In fact, during the seventh season of live-deer capture and data collection, it was easier for researchers to find and capture a live buck meeting the cull criteria on the treatment area than it was on the control area. During that year’s capture effort, when every live buck spotted from the helicopter is netted if possible, 60 percent of all bucks on the treatment area met the cull criteria while only 34 percent on the control area met the criteria.

“Overall, the bucks were just as big on the control area eight years later as they were on the treatment area,” Mickey said. “There was no noticeable difference in antler quality comparing age class to age class.”

To explain why the culling had not improved antler quality, Mickey turned to other data produced in the same study, data that is reflected in many other radio-telemetry studies around the nation: yearling-buck dispersal, adult buck movements and low reproductive success of any given individual buck. These factors, and others, such as the unaddressed genetic contributions of does, ensure constant genetic flux in a free-roaming deer population.

Even on a 9,500-acre study area, this natural genetic flow overwhelmed the extravagant efforts of researchers to shape antler quality.

Other non-genetic factors also interfered with the effort. To begin with, there were a few harvest mistakes. Also, the intensive culling of bucks caused the adult sex ratio to become skewed toward does. Evidence suggested that the breeding season became extended and some does were not bred until their second or third estrous, resulting in late-born fawns. Additionally, every region has its uncontrollable variables, such as fluctuating mast crops, and in South Texas one variable is rainfall. Highly variable rainfall resulted in variable fawn recruitment and variable yearling-buck antler quality throughout the study.

The lesson: If it didn’t work at the King Ranch, it certainly isn’t likely to work for free-roaming deer on much smaller private hunting properties.

“On the King Ranch, we’re not in a situation where we have too many deer for the habitat, so we weren’t improving nutrition by removing those culls,” said Mickey. “Any improvement in antler quality would have to be related to genetics, and it didn’t show up.”

So What is a Management Buck?

The King Ranch study has brought into serious question the idea that culling bucks improves antler genetics in free-roaming deer. This helps shave away the distortion created by the media and misinformed campfire talk and gets us back to the legitimate foundation of this management tool.

In a QDM program, a major goal is balancing the deer population with its habitat’s carrying capacity. In most situations, this means removing excess does. Potentially, this could also mean removing excess bucks, but for reasons that we are all familiar with, bucks are seldom in excess. For a program that has been working diligently over a period of years to increase buck age structure through very conservative buck harvest guidelines, an excess of bucks might be possible. Obviously, an excess of bucks is most likely to happen on large properties or large, well-run cooperatives, where buck harvest is controlled on a significant amount of acreage. In certain regions of Texas, large private properties and low hunter densities often combine to produce well-managed deer populations with an excess of bucks. When removing excess bucks from these management programs, managers learned over the years to select from the bottom, choosing the low-quality yearling bucks (meaning spikes in these areas) and low-quality mature bucks (ages vary, but most Texas managers allow bucks until 5.5 to reveal their potential). Removing these bucks removes a mouth from the habitat, reducing pressure on available nutrition, and it also provides recreation.

“On the King Ranch, a cull buck is a mature buck with a gross score in the bottom 25 to 50 percent of the gross-score average for their age class,” said Mickey. “We have an abundance of mature bucks, relatively few hunters, and those hunters are very selective and only harvest the top 5 percent of the mature bucks each year. So, year after year, all of these mature bucks with lower-scoring antlers are dying of old age, they’re consuming resources, and our goal on the King Ranch is to make those deer eligible for harvest because they provide a lot of recreation. There’s not any genetic benefits to removing them, but there are probably some nutritional benefits.

“But,” Mickey added, “outside of South Texas this kind of situation doesn’t occur very often. But a lot of television shows are filmed in South Texas, people throughout the country are watching and applying those techniques when they don’t have a balanced sex ratio, a balanced buck age structure or a population in balance with the habitat. Each buck they harvest reduces the potential pool of mature bucks.”
And delays QDM success.

Who Should Consider Shooting Management Bucks?

I asked Mickey to list the things that, in his view, must be accomplished before culling should be considered – the low rungs on the management ladder that he described. Here’s his checklist:

–Adjust the deer numbers to within the carrying capacity of the habitat so that you have optimal population size.

–Improve the habitat to the point that it is optimal as well, so you have optimal habitat quality and optimal deer density.

–Balance the adult sex ratio. This will be partly achieved through doe harvest as you reduce the deer density, but the other half of the equation is passing immature and middle-aged bucks.

–Achieve a situation in which you have high fawn recruitment and survival every year due to quality habitat and a balanced buck/doe ratio.

–Achieve a balanced buck age structure with bucks of all ages represented and – here’s the important kicker – an excess of mature bucks. This requirement alone will be a tough step on the ladder for most deer managers to climb.

–Collect enough local data to identify the average mature buck in terms of body size, gross score and antler configuration, so that you can identify the difference between an above average and below average mature buck in the field. Mickey believes that a buck doesn’t show you his full antler potential until 5.5, although the King Ranch has management buck criteria starting at 3.5. But they use a sliding scale: to avoid mistakes, selection criteria are far more strict for 3.5-year-olds than for 4.5- and 5.5-year-olds.

The management intensity described here puts such a program out of the realm of QDM and well into the range of Trophy Deer Management. But it is worth reviewing to impress upon QDMA members the rarity of situations when all of these steps on the ladder have been achieved, or are even realistic. Not only is it a complex endeavor, it requires that the hunters who then implement the criteria are skilled at field-judging bucks and are responsible enough to restrain themselves when they have only been given a 3-second glimpse at a buck.

“This requires a lot of restraint,” said Mickey. “You have to be able to watch that buck and see him at different angles over a period of time to be able to accurately age him. You’re not going to be able to age a buck with only a glimpse. And for most of us, a glimpse of a mature buck is usually all we get. Because of this, the idea of culling is not even applicable in the majority of situations before you even start considering any deer population factors. In some areas, the habitat is too dense to allow for easy field judging. In other places, the season is too short. For example, I own hunting property in Iowa and we’re not harvesting management bucks because it’s a 5-day gun season. You don’t have time to be as selective as you do in states with longer gun seasons. Plus you have limited buck tags, and you don’t want to burn them on a management buck.”

After all of this, I know there will be many hunters out there whose deer program is not ready for culling but who remain convinced that removing a buck with low-quality antlers is a step in the right direction. Our best science strongly indicates that removing him is not likely to improve local antler quality, even in well-managed populations. And conversely, there are many benefits to passing him.

“If you don’t have any middle-age or older bucks, the more bucks that you can squeeze into the middle-age class, the better off you are,” said Mickey.

This even goes for bucks with strange-looking antlers. As Brian Murphy explained in his article in the October issue of Quality Whitetails, there are many causes of abnormal antlers that have nothing to do with genetics, such as antler and body injuries.

“For example, consider a buck with a skeletal injury that is not life-threatening,” said Mickey. “He’s going to survive and thrive, but his antlers may always be affected. Number one, that’s a recognizable deer. You can get some enjoyment simply by seeing what he looks like each year. With skeletal injuries you can really get some non-typical antler growth, so finding his sheds would be unique, which would give me incentive to let him walk. He would be a neat buck to follow for the remainder of his life because he’s recognizable.”

Conclusion

Scanning a Web hunting forum recently for talk of culling, I felt the toothache return. In the middle of a conversation in which the term “management buck” was being used, a hunter piped in and asked what the term meant. Another hunter replied: that’s a genetically inferior animal that you shoot to prevent it from breeding and spreading its genes. A third hunter agreed and went on to say that he commonly shoots these bucks to get their “bad genes” out of the pool. In fact, he added, he knew lots of hunters who do this. No one disagreed with these assessments, and the questioning hunter thanked the others for their explanation.

I wondered if this common but inaccurate definition of a management buck serves some good. Is it acting as an emergency pressure-release valve for hunters who just don’t have the patience or commitment for QDM and want to harvest a buck? This leads me to wonder if QDM enthusiasts have created this problem ourselves. Have we created an environment in which some hunters have to find a management excuse to hide behind when all they wanted to do was harvest a buck?

Either way, there are also hunters among us, hunters we know, who truly want to achieve QDM success, but they are operating on incomplete information and are shooting themselves in the foot by culling bucks. The next time you hear someone talking about the gene pool or removing an inferior buck to keep him from breeding, share this simple and familiar message:

Three things produce quality bucks: Age, Nutrition and Genetics. Two of these you can manipulate in ways that produce results. You can manage for age by allowing young bucks to grow older, and you can improve nutrition through habitat improvement, food plots and proper herd management. So focus on what you know you can manage.

I hope I’ve made some small step toward helping you help misinformed hunters. One thing is sure – speaking out has helped the toothache.



Additional Discussion: The Spike-On-One-Side Gene?

There are some hunters who are convinced that they are witnessing a crippling antler trait in their local deer population, and one example that is often cited is seeing many individual bucks over the course of years with a typical beam and tines on one side and a single spike antler on the other side. While we are not ruling out the possibility, deer biologists and management experts are fairly well united in their rejection of the idea of such significantly damaging antler traits in specific populations.

“In all of my experience, I never have seen a herd with an antler gene problem,” said Mickey. “I have talked to hunters who say they are seeing 2.5-year-old and older bucks with a single spike on one side, and they are convinced it’s a genetic trait. In some cases, I can’t convince them otherwise.”

Other Articles: Spike on One Side: Genetics or Injury?

Mickey said that in all of his experience with wild-captured bucks, the “spike-on-one-side” trait is usually caused by an antler or pedicle injury, and it’s usually a one-year effect.

As an example, Mickey recalled a particular buck captured in multiple years on the King Ranch. First captured at 3.5 years of age, the buck had 6 typical points on one side and a long spike with a brow point on the other side. The buck was tagged, including the implantation of microchips in his ear and leg to ensure accurate identification in the future, and released.

“He qualified as a cull buck, and we designated him for harvest that season, but he was not killed,” said Mickey. “The next year we recaptured him, and I never had a clue it was him. Nobody did. He was 7×6. That spike became a normal 6-point side. He jumped almost 60 inches in B&C score in one year, and we wouldn’t have known it was him without the microchips.”

At 4.5, the buck was put off limits. He was not captured again until he was 6.5. Here’s the overall progression from a 90-inch cull buck to a 180-inch 17-pointer in three years:

1999: Age 3.5 – 6×2 – 90 6/8 inches gross score.
2000: Age 4.5 – 7×6 – 148 6/8 gross score.
2002: Age 6.5 – 7×6 plus 4 abnormals – 179 6/8 gross score.

“This really brought home the point to me about culling bucks with an abnormal side,” said Mickey. “We could have made a huge mistake killing him at 3.5.

“My new rule of thumb in south Texas: if the normal side is small, then harvest the deer. If that normal side shows any potential, then we recommend that you don’t harvest that buck. More likely than not, that abnormal side comes back normal. This is assuming that the cause is an antler injury, which it usually is. If the cause is a body injury, that deformity is probably going to recur. So, we tell our hunters that if he has a visible skeletal injury and an abnormal side, then you should harvest him.”

Keep in mind that these guidelines are for the King Ranch, which is under intensive Trophy Deer Management. As we establish in the main article, attempting to identify and remove “cull” bucks is recommended only for programs in advanced stages of management.
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quackhead04
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Re: Management bucks article

Postby quackhead04 » Mon Nov 10, 2014 12:58 pm

Great article! In discussing rules/mgmt decisions with my fellow club members the mgmt buck discussion came up with people very set in their belief of right and wrong. I was generally playing referee until everyone calmed down and started to discuss it. We ended up deciding against mgmt bucks due to one question that was asked that was by far one of the best statements I've ever heard made when it came to this subject... If that is a cull buck, show me what a cull doe looks like cause he got 50% of his genetics from her... Always thought that was a great point and a good thing to think about!
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Re: Management bucks article

Postby hillhunter » Mon Nov 10, 2014 4:55 pm

I think to sum the article up he is basically saying that we should take 4.5 year old bucks and up, no 2.5s or 3.5s no matter what they look like.

I agree a hundred percent on your doe statement.
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Re: Management bucks article

Postby camlock » Tue Nov 11, 2014 12:19 pm

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Re: Management bucks article

Postby GrizwalD » Tue Nov 11, 2014 6:23 pm

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Re: Management bucks article

Postby hillhunter » Tue Nov 11, 2014 9:25 pm

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Re: Management bucks article

Postby stang67 » Wed Nov 12, 2014 10:06 am

Overharvest is the biggest threat (and current problem in many cases) facing quality of deer hunting in MS, hands down. The idiotic notion that someone is helping the deer herd by killing "extra" bucks because they have inferior headgear is at the center of this threat.

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