Eh not sure about taking the dumb out of the herd, the young ones are dumb period, they just never get the chance to wisen up. It just takes young bucks out of the herd. To each their own though. I have shot a bunch of young bull elk that were young and dumbYou have a good hunt, in your way, and don't worry about what other people kill. I'm convinced that killing young animals makes more space for mature animals to become old.
It also takes the dumb out of the herd when folks are happy, and able, to whack the young one standing next to the road.
Eh not sure about taking the dumb out of the herd, the young ones are dumb period, they just never get the chance to wisen up. It just takes young bucks out of the herd. To each their own though. I have shot a bunch of young bull elk that were young and dumb
I agree to a point about genetics, but some of what you talked about is learned traits. Also aren’t the majority of younger animals/ humans dumb/ inexperienced? Think about it. Were you a genius in middle/ high school? Some of the most successful people I know today were idiots. To that point as well the rut makes even the biggest and wileyest animals really dumb. I don’t think dropping all the 1.5 year olds near a road is really cleansing the gene pool of dummies. Think about how dumb spike elk are? Killing them isn’t making it easier to find mature bulls, there are just less. Which is fine the limits are set by the biologist for carrying capacity. What we are disagreeing on is pure nature vs nurture. I think it’s more of a mix of both than purely geneticYou don't think animals have tendencies and patterns?
My wild guess is that young animals learn from older animals AND their genetic makeup tells them how to live their life. That leads me to believe that if a buck and some does survive long enough hanging out next to the road and create off spring. Their traits on both levels will be passed on and reinforced. Maybe just like a dog being bred for a purpose. Or maybe why folks talk about elk "not rutting". If the bulls that are genetically and conditionally most likely to be vocal are killed, those traits get removed from the gene pool and the bulls that are quieter live on to reinforce those genes.
So if "we" want to grow big bucks, the easiest way to get the little ones older is by reinforcing the traits that make them hard to kill; by killing the ones that don't care about their safety. <----again, my wild logic
I agree to a point about genetics, but some of what you talked about is learned traits. Also aren’t the majority of younger animals/ humans dumb/ inexperienced? Think about it. Were you a genius in middle/ high school? Some of the most successful people I know today were idiots. To that point as well the rut makes even the biggest and wileyest animals really dumb. I don’t think dropping all the 1.5 year olds near a road is really cleansing the gene pool of dummies. Think about how dumb spike elk are? Killing them isn’t making it easier to find mature bulls, there are just less. Which is fine the limits are set by the biologist for carrying capacity. What we are disagreeing on is pure nature vs nurture. I think it’s more of a mix of both than purely genetic
Love this, closing roads is such an easy solution that helps the animals. I love nothing more than a locked gate with walk in access.Want bigger bucks? Super easy.
Shut down half the roads through their habitat. Especially lower range where they rut and winter.
Food
Water
Sanctuary
Or hunters can just keep bickering with each other. That’s not getting us anywhere.
During the rut, the big ones will be near roads 100%. Most caution goes out the window in November.I think if you let people hunt the park it would take all of about 3 days for the elk to push way the heck out of eyesight and start acting like elk. They have only been habituated via learning, they still know how to be elk.
The wolves you talked about came from a pack where they learned that livestock were easy targets taught traits.
Geographically yes the does or cows will influence survivability via hey I live here and migrate there and those places are remote or hard to access, but because we punched roads all over the mountains doesn’t mean we will have genetically superior animals away from roads, buddy killed a 180 inch 3x4 last year after stepping out of his truck, and the buck he was fighting with was even bigger. Know of a 220 buck that was shot from a road during second rifle…. The theory of the big ones are never near roads… doesn’t really add up.