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Click wrote:

Dux Be Us wrote:I call bald face liar to anyone on here that says they would pass on a 150" buck in Mississippi...just sayin

Saw a giant by the casinos in Tunica county runnin' does...atleast 150"

So u passed on him?

I was on my way to do some work...he was near the red light in front of Sams Town. His rack came out like mountain bike handle bars well past his ears. Chocalate rack with stickers and amazing mass. I myself hunt public land for meat, and, if its legal...I will shoot at it. More power to tha fellas that want to pay big bux for big bucks...just aint my thang

Myself I hunt private land. Mainly in Rankin county. A little over 2000, just me and my boys. Mainly pines and yes you can grow big deer on small plots of land. Our largest plot is less than 500. But I love to hunt public land also. This year I have only hunted our land two times the rest was public

DUCK-HUNT wrote:

Sam1 wrote:Food, genetics, and food. I don't care if you have a 100 acre weekend farm or 10000 acres inside the levee, learning how to manage your culls, doe and food sources make all the difference in the world in terms of deer you will harvest in the future. We put together a cull hit list this year and realized that we have way too many mature scrap headed deer on our farm. It is hard to produce the 150 inch deer or better when you have 20+ 3.5yr+ old culls breeding doe. As hard as it is, we are not shooting 10's this year...unless i see this 180 you are talking about.

u shooting those does throwing those scrap headed culls too right????? and how do you know which doe are throwing those scrap heads....??????

shooting culls is doing nothing more than removing mouths from the heard... u would be doing just as good to shoot every doe u see


I THINK....

carry on

I agree 100%

I passed on a 140-150 12 and a 130 8 both less than 20 yards because of a 180 in 12 bedded down 60 yards from my stand. Still regret it today. On a quick note, do NOT grunt at large buck, he WILL jump from bed and run both deer away none to be seen again rest of trip. This was Illinois not Mississippi.

Shooting culls is much more than removing a mouth from a heard. It is removing the genetics from the heard. That 4.5yr old 6 point with no brow tines is going to whip the 2.5yr old perfect 10 all day long when it comes to breeding. Simple fact. When it comes to doe…no I don’t know if the deer has been bread or not, but I do know it won’t be by the cull I killed during bow season. If your goal is to manage a farm for trophy deer, get the rid of undesirable characteristics first.

Sam1 wrote:Shooting culls is much more than removing a mouth from a heard. It is removing the genetics from the heard. That 4.5yr old 6 point with no brow tines is going to whip the 2.5yr old perfect 10 all day long when it comes to breeding. Simple fact. When it comes to doe…no I don’t know if the deer has been bread or not, but I do know it won’t be by the cull I killed during bow season. If your goal is to manage a farm for trophy deer, get the rid of undesirable characteristics first.

Do you know that a doe's genetic makeup contributes as much or more to the offspring's antler potential as the father's? I take it you do not, or DUCK-HUNT's post would've actually registered with you.

So let's stack em up like cord wood.

Some key things I have always remembered from a presentation given by Dr Jacobson back in the 80's on big deer/habitat/management:

A) First comes age, you have to let him mature to really see what he is capable of. He showed some pretty lousy racks from the MSU pen deer when they were 1.5 and 2.5, then he would show a set from the same deer at 5.5. Forked horn 18 month olds and 14 inch 2.5 yr old 8 pointers turned into some pretty impressive animals. Age is #1.
B) The dirt matters. You may can do some things to help, but a large acreage of good dirt for them to roam around on will show results.
C) Genetics, a can of worms that best left un-opened unless you have a large enough area and controlled numbers of deer where you can identify individual animals on a large scale.
D) Most whitetail deer in the US are gentic made to grow up to be 130 class 8 pointers, that is their peak regardless. Anything bigger is representative of less than 5% of the buck population

I personally believe "culling" is a load of crap. Where is the evidence that this works? The King Ranch did a 6 year study and culled every inferior deer on 10k acres, even shot them out of helicopters, and it had a negative effect. Just because a buck isn't what you want him to be does not mean everyone of his offspring will be the same.
http://www.qdma.com/what-we-do/articles ... ent-bucks/
http://www.nighthawkpublications.com/jo ... rnal_4.htm
If you want to shoot small bucks then do it, but don't call them culls just because your embarrassed of what someone might think .That's ridiculous. Just my honest opinion.

DoubleBandMS wrote:If you want to shoot small bucks then do it, but don't call them culls just because your embarrassed of what someone might think .That's ridiculous. Just my honest opinion.

^^^Best post ever on Deersouth^^^

stang67 wrote:

Sam1 wrote:Shooting culls is much more than removing a mouth from a heard. It is removing the genetics from the heard. That 4.5yr old 6 point with no brow tines is going to whip the 2.5yr old perfect 10 all day long when it comes to breeding. Simple fact. When it comes to doe…no I don’t know if the deer has been bread or not, but I do know it won’t be by the cull I killed during bow season. If your goal is to manage a farm for trophy deer, get the rid of undesirable characteristics first.

Do you know that a doe's genetic makeup contributes as much or more to the offspring's antler potential as the father's? I take it you do not, or DUCK-HUNT's post would've actually registered with you.

I agree, but if a 5.5 year old 6 point comes out, you know for a FACT you don't want those gentics around. you said it yourself, a buck's genetics contribute half. if you know you don't want those genetics, take him out. At least it eliminates that buck from passing on his part of the bad genes.

There has been research that says culling doesn't work, but its not from a genetic standpoint. It's from a deer traveling and where your bucks are actually born point of view. put very shortly, your culling may not be helping you as much as it is helping your neighbor.

Obviously I am not a biologist, and I am sure that many of you have much more knowledge in deer/herd management than I do. That’s why I like this conversation. I have had the opportunity to hunt a farm that is 5k+ acres and has been on a QDMA management program for a while. This farm has had the same biologist I think for the past 10yrs or so. We have been killing 30-40 doe a year and the biologist has been a proponent of shooting culls for the past few years. His “cull” being mature (4.5yr+ old) deer with undesirable rack characteristics. After wading through thousands of trail cam photo’s this year, the biologist has really stressed focusing on the “cull”. He was identifying way too many mature deer with what he calls very little trophy potential. I understand that a does genetics play a big role in the development of deer, but when I see so many older dominant deer carrying 100 or so inches, it is hard for me to not be a believer. I know many of you are much more educated on the topic so I am all ears.

LawDawg wrote:There has been research that says culling doesn't work, but its not from a genetic standpoint. It's from a deer traveling and where your bucks are actually born point of view. put very shortly, your culling may not be helping you as much as it is helping your neighbor.

I agree -- culling has a negligible impact on a free range herd (up to at least 10k acres in size according to the article below).

http://www.qdma.com/what-we-do/articles ... ent-bucks/ Some of my favorite snippets...

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.

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

Sam1, find me one mention of the word CULLING in QDMA's list of principles and I'll buy you a Coke. QDMA principles care not one bit for antler inches.

TODO wrote:

Dux Be Us wrote:I call bald face liar to anyone on here that says they would pass on a 150" buck in Mississippi...just sayin :lol:quote]



You better start callin folks a liar then! There are several clubs just in my area on the river that 150" 10 pt doesnt make club criteria and are getting passed everyday!

You beat me to it. They get passed on all the time on the river in the delta.

cwink wrote:

brandonvet wrote:

chopper30 wrote:My rule is shoot 4.5 year old deer and older. Don't care how big he is, at 3.5 you got to let him go

Well I guess i'm gonna hafta get one of them new scopes that tell you the age of the deer, cuz mine don't do that!

Chad Dacus comes out to our camp each year and gives us an update on all the deer we shot thru the DMAP program.. Just about 90% of all of the bucks in our soil region (South Rankin/North Simpson county) are going to have 14" inside spread at 3.5 years old. That is just outside the ears..

It takes 16-17 inches inside spread to get outside the ears on our deer.