Balancing Opportunity and Age: The Impact of Buck Point Restrictions

[idelkslayer]

Reading and listening to all this info about APR's recently got me thinking. What kind of impact do you all think a point restriction on larger bucks would have on a mule deer population (Buck age class, total numbers, etc...)? By larger bucks I mean a restriction such as 3 point or smaller, rather than 3 point or bigger.

I'm not aware of anywhere where this has been implemented on a large scale for mule deer but if it has I would love to know about it. I suppose that Utah does a similar thing with their LE elk units. Spike tags are often abundant while hunting pressure on the upper age classes is heavily restricted.

Could this be an effective way to manage for an older age class while still maintaining plenty of opportunity? What impacts do you think this would have on deer with "poor" genetics (big mature two points for example)?

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What you are proposing is effectively what naturally occurs with general season OTC hunts. 1.5 to 3.5 year old bucks are the majority of bucks harvested. In most Idaho general seasons 2-pts make up 40-60% of the harvest and 4-pts are 20-35%.

 

[Rich M]

What if people had to buy a tag based on what they wanted to shoot?

I said I wanted a typical 3x3 or 4x4 - typical buck or better. Shot a 4x4 typical.

Maybe we could sell forky tags, 3x3, 3x4, 2x3, etc. tags and limit folks to what the paid for?