hoosierhuntinful said:
once again where did those big bucks come from in the first year of OBR.that is common sense
Hoosier, Up until the Mid 1990's, if you remember, harvesting does was on a lottery basis. The fact that the gun season was bucks only (for the most part) caused the male segment of Indiana's herd to be overharvested all across the state for years and years. Couple this with protection of does and you have a recipe for a herd to grow out of control (which it was in many parts of Indiana).
When I first started hunting in the 80s this overpopulation was very evident, but since I was a teenager who just wanted to kill a deer it was great to see bunches of deer (although most were antlerless). It was nothing to go out and see 15-20 antlerless deer and not see hardly any bucks, let alone a big, mature buck. Just to see a buck was a treat. But, even in this overpopulation some bucks, no doubt, are survivers and slipped past hunters and eventually were shot. This is why we saw very few truly huge bucks prior to this time period. They literally were non-existant in large numbers.
As you know, groups in the state (farm groups, insurance groups, etc.) asked the state to step in to alleviate the problem with this overpopulation. I think 1995, or 1996 was the first year where any individual hunter could by tags over the counter for the first time ever for their county. From about the mid 1990s to the beginning of the OBR, the herd was hit hard and many, many does were killed for the first time period ever in Indiana.
Here is what happened....as the overall herd decreased and females were eliminated en mass the overall herd density decreased ( less overall deer). And at this same time the states' buck:doe ratio began to slowly come closer together ( it was better than it used to be anyway). When a deer herd is reduced causing a density to decline individual members of the herd that survived were eating better, etc. because of this herd reduction. It's well documented that mature, "trophy" bucks come from herds in which the densities are lowered, and does are continually harvested. While the state didn't open up the doe system to specifically cause a better buck:doe ratio, or try to produce "trophy" bucks, this is exactly what happened.
In about the 5 years that preceded the initiation of the OBR I personally began seeing better bucks in my hunting area than ever before, and started to see more bucks in relation to the number of does that I saw. I can remember my farmer saying the same thing. He commented that you rarely used to see very many bucks, but he said things like "It seems like for every doe I see I'm seeing darn near as many bucks now".
You obviously can't deny that in this same time frame that hunters acrossed Indiana (and the continent as a whole) began to practice better deer management as the mass media began to "educate" darn near every deer hunter out there. People began to pass those 1.5 year old bucks that they had harvested in years past. Not all hunters, but enough to help more bucks survive from year to year.
I've seen you ask why the age structure improved prior to the OBR, and it is first and foremost because of the reduction in the herd as a whole, which drove up the average size of bucks and does. The OBR has just intensified this improvement even quicker than it would have under a two buck system.
My question is, if we go back to a two buck system will hunters still pass up young bucks? What I fear the most is that hunters will go back to the mindset of shooting a young buck first, and then "trophy" hunt. And if many hunters fill their freezers up with bucks, will the doe harvest drop? To me, this is the real threat of going back to a two buck structure. Will enough does continue to be harvested? Will overpopulation become the issue that it was in the past over time?