As to not hijack someone’s thread, I thought I’d start my own. In my opinion,
Nothing more needs to happen in this state other than move the gun season out of the rut! Statewide, does Iowa…Illinois…Kansas…Ohio have antler restrictions? Unless something has changed of late, no. Do they all have a gun season out of the rut? YES. Problem solved. You get to shoot what you are now, just at a different time of the year.
And since this seems to be a SE MN(zone 300) issue only, no need for N MN deer hunters to be hunting in the middle of Dec when it’s going to be cold as you know what. Outside of zone 300, their seasons stay the same. As long as there was ZERO loop hole that allowed zone 100 and zone 200 sportsman to hunt their season and then come over into zone 300 to hunt, there won’t be an issue.
Why complicate every dang whitetail reg when something(the right thing) is staring you right in the face??
->There needs to be an A and B season in zone 300 to accommodate all of the hunters and land opportunities.
->Set the season dates and time frames that make sense and after the rut. There will be far less people who really want a 9 day first season when it doesn’t happen during the rut. You can bet on that.
->All of this will generate more bow hunters, that’s a guarantee. But archery success rates are so low from a management perspective, we/they really don’t matter much. Many will pick up the sport, but a lot will die off after a couple years.
-Eliminate cross tagging bucks? Good luck enforcing that one.