On fish size limits and antler point restrictions.

Folks familiar with Origin of the Species and the Theory of Evolution and Natural Selection might be interested in this take.

What happens in evolution when a population is subject to specific selection criteria over a long period of time? Those organisms within the population that are selected to reproduce pass on their genetic attributes to their offspring. The population as a whole then evolves towards organisms only expressing those attributes.

If you were to, say, remove more of the large fish or more of the large antlered deer out of the population over a period of time then then evolution of those populations would trend towards smaller fish and smaller antlered deer.

For instance under APR there is no deer more fit, able, and apt to survive and reproduce as a fully mature, small antlered buck. That deer is virtually guaranteed a long and reproductive life. He will live to a ripe old age spreading his small antlered genetics vigorously and relentlessly among the population.

https://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/0_0_0/conover_03

You don’t have to sell me on the idea that antler restrictions are a really bad idea, I am well aware of that! But your theory is solid non the less!

I’ve always wondered about if apr was in our area the number of bucks with the screwy racks that would be running around. We had a good four year stretch where these bucks would have a 3-4 point rack small on one side and basically a glorified nub or spike on the other. After harvesting em for a few years haven’t seen any with racks like that.

Im no geneticist, but here is my opinion on this….
I know that most people that claim “small bucks” that these deer are in fact most often not genetically inferior; but just young, nutrition deficient, or the age structure is off causing undue social stress. Is it impossible to visually see a buck on the hoof and read his genetics. Unless you are running a high fence operation.

Antler size at the time of reproduction has nothing to do with the genetics he is passing on.

Example… If you have a baby and you weigh 400 lbs at the time, and the next baby you have 2 years later you had a huge weight loss and now only weigh 200 lbs. Is your second kid “genetically” more likely to be thinner than the first? NO, they are exactly the same genetics.

The genes never change throughout a bucks life, his genetic map is his genetic map. Regardless of age, regardless of antler size.

Well, it’s not quite as simple as it is made out to be. The link assumes all small fish are small because they are genetically predisposed to be small, and age has nothing to do with it. After reading the link a few times their conclusion is more and more ridiculous every time. For the most part fish are small because they are young or over populated. Bluegill reproductive strategy can get out of whack by overharvest of larger males. That results in cuckholder males, the small sneaky ones, that pass on their small sneaky genes. Then we end up with stunted bluegills. We can get hammer handle northers because we pick off the larger ones that help keep the population in check. If genetics was the main driver of fish size we wouldn’t see size regulations working.

For the most part, mortality is why fish and wildlife populations don’t get to trophy size. Either we crop them off before they get big, or the rest of nature does. All walleyes will never get to 10 pounds, all muskies won’t get to 50+ inches, all deer won’t get to 170 inches regardless of if people manipulate their populations or not. FWIW fish and wildlife aren’t fruit flies where the entire population can be genetically altered in one generation.

I totally agree sktrwx2200. You got your post written faster than I got mine.

I’m also against APR but the theory here is somewhat skewed (but there is logic to it). The problem here is that these bucks, with APR’s, are living long enough to breed and pass on their genes to 2-3 years of offspring before you get a chance to shoot them. Another thing, these bucks tend to breed the does over “wonky” antler bucks so they spread the gene pool quicker.

not to take away from the point but I don’t think evolution is the correct word. Evolution takes possibly hundreds or thousands of generations to take effect. I think the appropriate term is natural selection or maybe more appropriately artificial selection. Natural selection is indeed a cause of evolution but evolution is difficult to undo while selection, natural or artificial, is much more feasible to undo.

On one end of the spectrum we have panfish which are severely overfished by taking only the largest of the body of water. This results in lakes that are stunted. Some evidence shows that pike are a factor to this but it is still a result of the same thing. Normally the larger pike are taken from that body of water.

On the opposite side of the spectrum we have muskies. They are now growing to historic sizes and are highly successful. This is a result of selecting the largest growing species strains for stocking in most places.

My point is that what is being done can be undone and basically made into whatever we want it to be. Take livestock and pets for example. The genetics in these animals are relatively close to their ancient wild predecessors but we’ve selected genes that benefit us. I can guarantee this can be done in the wild if we wanted it. It can be as simple as changing to a more friendly selective harvest.

We just need to be careful because we could go too far in the wrong direction and create problems. Take Mille Lacs for example. Too many large walleyes creates a negative imbalance in the system.

sktrwx2200 wrote:

Antler size at the time of reproduction has nothing to do with the genetics he is passing on.

Understood. But what is described in natural selection is NOT that organisms with the selected attributes are the ONLY organisms that reproduce, but that those organisms are MORE LIKELY to reproduce. And because of that, over time, those organisms with the selected attributes become predominate.

For instance compare the reproductive life time of two deer. One has the genetics to produce a 12 point rack at maturity. The other has the genetics to produce only a 4 point rack at maturity. The 12 pointer likely has 1-2 years of reproductive life before he is shot (likely before he even lives to his full potential 12 points). The 4 pointer has maybe 5 or 6 reproductive years. The 4 pointer is protected his entire life and hence lives to a ripe old age. Repeat this pattern over 10’s or hundreds of successive generations and you get a population of mature deer with 4 points or less.

Incidentally, this scenario would likely follow a logarithmic rather than a linear regression. You would see increased pressure on the fewer and fewer remaining large antlered deer over time.

Here’s a good read. We’re all a little right and wrong.

Will Dominant Bucks Dominate the Breeding?

Snap wrote:

<div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>sktrwx2200 wrote:</div>
Antler size at the time of reproduction has nothing to do with the genetics he is passing on.

For instance compare the reproductive life time of two deer. One has the genetics to produce a 12 point rack at maturity. The other has the genetics to produce only a 4 point rack at maturity. The 12 pointer likely has 1-2 years of reproductive life before he is shot (likely before he even lives to his full potential 12 points). The 4 pointer has maybe 5 or 6 reproductive years. The 4 pointer is protected his entire life and hence lives to a ripe old age. Repeat this pattern over 10’s or hundreds of successive generations and you get a population of mature deer with 4 points or less.

That’s a good theory, but that just doesn’t happen. You are saying that there are hundreds of thousands of whitetail bucks running around as 6 -7 year old 4 points or we call (2×2 where I’m from). I have never seen a 7 year old 2×2 buck in my life, unless it was from injury or deformation or something. Mother Nature has checks in her system to prevent this. The strongest breed for a reason. Doe have preference for dominance, physically larger bodied and larger antlered bucks. The strongest/largest most dominant breeds. This has been scientifically proven. Do forks and spikes get in.. absolutely.. but the scenario that you are describing just would not happen frequently enough to even move the evolution needle for those deer. Maybe in a very small very isolated deer herd you could see some of this, but not anything that could be applied on a large scale. This is a good topic to talk about.

Antler Point Restriction = trying to fix something that isn’t broken.

sktrwx2200 wrote:

<div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>Snap wrote:</div>

<div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>sktrwx2200 wrote:</div>
Antler size at the time of reproduction has nothing to do with the genetics he is passing on.

For instance compare the reproductive life time of two deer. One has the genetics to produce a 12 point rack at maturity. The other has the genetics to produce only a 4 point rack at maturity. The 12 pointer likely has 1-2 years of reproductive life before he is shot (likely before he even lives to his full potential 12 points). The 4 pointer has maybe 5 or 6 reproductive years. The 4 pointer is protected his entire life and hence lives to a ripe old age. Repeat this pattern over 10’s or hundreds of successive generations and you get a population of mature deer with 4 points or less.

That’s a good theory, but that just doesn’t happen. You are saying that there are hundreds of thousands of whitetail bucks running around as 6 -7 year old 4 points or we call (2×2 where I’m from). I have never seen a 7 year old 2×2 buck in my life, unless it was from injury or deformation or something. Mother Nature has checks in her system to prevent this. The strongest breed for a reason. Doe have preference for dominance, physically larger bodied and larger antlered bucks. The strongest/largest most dominant breeds. This has been scientifically proven. Do forks and spikes get in.. absolutely.. but the scenario that you are describing just would not happen frequently enough to even move the evolution needle for those deer. Maybe in a very small very isolated deer herd you could see some of this, but not anything that could be applied on a large scale. This is a good topic to talk about.

x2. Plus the fact that even the hypothetical 4 point 7 year old buck wouldn’t necessarily pass on that gene sequence to it’s offspring, it could just as likely (perhaps more likely if big antlers are dominant, and this particular buck just had the recessive 4 point gene show for him) pass on 12 point buck genetics.

sktrwx2200 wrote:

You are saying that hundreds of thousands of whitetail bucks running around as 6 -7 year old 4 points

No, sorry, i’m not saying that. I’m saying that if there were fully mature 4 point bucks in the population, even as a fluke, then they would be protected by law until they die of natural causes. A longer life would tend to cause them to be MORE LIKELY to pass on their genetics to their offspring. This would cause the population as a whole to tend toward smaller antlered deer. Again, we’re not talking about 1 or 2 generations or even 5 or 10. But if you were to impose a selection criteria against large antlered deer within a population consistently and over enough time then end result seems inevitable.

BigWerm wrote:

it could just as likely (perhaps more likely if big antlers are dominant, and this particular buck just had the recessive 4 point gene show for him) pass on 12 point buck genetics.

I believe you’re making a few assumptions. “Large antlers are a dominate phenotype and small antlers are a recessive phenotype.” This may be true but i’ve never seen or heard of a study that has even considered this much less confirmed it. Have you?

It’s a genetic myth that dominate phenotypes are more commonly expressed in a population than recessive phenotypes. This is not the case as it is equally likely that recessive phenotypes are more commonly expressed than dominate phenotypes. What matters is which organisms are more likely to reproduce. If you protect small antlered deer, by law, until they die of old age they will be more likely to reproduce.

So where is the data showing all these 4 pt 7 year old deer in wild populations with APR? I don’t keep up with deer management as much as fish so I’d like to read it.

blackbay wrote:

So where is the data showing all these 4 pt 7 year old deer in wild populations with APR? I don’t keep up with deer management as much as fish so I’d like to read it.

Hello Blackbay, i’m not aware of anyone funding research into this at the moment. Do you have any data showing that 4 point 7 year old deer don’t exist? Remember that natural selection doesn’t require large numbers at the onset. It only requires that at some point one exists and that selection criteria favors it. Time and evolution takes care of the rest.

FYI, this deer is illegal to shoot under APR.

Snap wrote:

I believe you’re making a few assumptions. “Large antlers are a dominate phenotype and small antlers are a recessive phenotype.” This may be true but i’ve never seen or heard of a study that has even considered this much less confirmed it. Have you?

I haven’t seen a study, but Thousands of years of evolution support this hypothesis. Also, I have seen plenty anecdotal evidence of smaller bucks being subservient to larger bucks, which is not necessarily indicative of the phenotype, but would refute your hypothesis. But that was not my point, my point was that even if old 4 point buck breeds the most, it does not mean his off spring are going to be more 4 point bucks. Maybe, maybe not. And same thing on the other end, if only the biggest bucks breed the most and only passed on big buck gene’s, there would not be any old 4 point bucks at this point. The fact that there are (I assume) old 4 point bucks, COULD be indicative of your hypothesis, or recessive gene’s of big bucks children, or a plethora of other factors (diet, trauma, disease etc. etc.). Fish on the other hand is a similar but different conversation since they are in a much smaller ecosystem.

Besides CWD (not something I’m interested in discussing here btw), I’m curious why people are opposed to APR? I’ve been able to hunt SE MN for the first time the last couple years, and it’s made me a big fan after years of hunting all over the rest of MN my other 20 years of hunting.

BigWerm wrote:

But that was not my point, my point was that even if old 4 point buck breeds the most, it does not mean his off spring are going to be more 4 point bucks.

I believe we agree on this point then. I agree that a mature 4 point buck won’t necessarily always produce offspring with 4 points. What is clear based on evolution and natural selection though is if that selection criteria persists over generations the population will TEND TOWARDS being 4 points.

Snap wrote:

<div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>BigWerm wrote:</div>
But that was not my point, my point was that even if old 4 point buck breeds the most, it does not mean his off spring are going to be more 4 point bucks.

I believe we agree on this point then. I agree that a mature 4 point buck won’t necessarily always produce offspring with 4 points. What is clear based on evolution and natural selection though is if that selection criteria persists over generations the population will TEND TOWARDS being 4 points.

Agreed, but that is not what APR does, if anything it skews it toward bigger deer. Sure a few anomaly 4 pt max size bucks likely sneak thru, but that is in statistical minority to an increase in the average buck age and size since most deer need to be 3+ years old to achieve the APR, whereas a normal hunting zone has a much lower mean age and size.

<edit> sorry duplicate.

BigWerm wrote:

the average buck age and size since most deer need to be 3+ years old to achieve the APR

FYI, the genetic potential for large antlers has nothing to do with the age of the deer.

A one year old buck with large antler genetics is just as likely to produce large antler offspring as a 6 year old buck with large antler genetics.

I believe misconceptions like this are one reason why APR has any advocates at all.

APR specifically SELECTS OUT deer with large antlers genetic and SELECTS IN deer with small antler genetics. That is literally what it does.

Snap wrote:

APR specifically SELECTS OUT deer with large antlers genetic and SELECTS IN deer with small antler genetics. That is literally what it does.

In comparison to no harvest, yes, compared to non-APR zones, no. As a no APR zone harvests all bucks that present a shot to a non-selective hunter. An APR zone allows all bucks an extra couple years of breeding.

It was very eye opening to me the first year I was able to hunt the APR zone. First weekend we hunted our regular non-APR zone and dropped the deer that were shot off at Thielen’s for processing, and there were a lot of nice bucks. Second weekend I shot a 10 pointer that would have been one of the biggest at Thielens, and it was not even close to the biggest at the meat market in Kellogg, and there were way more deer in Pierz. Anecdotal evidence, but applicable imo.

BigWerm wrote:

In comparison to no harvest, yes, compared to non-APR zones, no. As a no APR zone harvests all bucks that present a shot to a non-selective hunter. An APR zone allows all bucks an extra couple years of breeding.

APR does not make any restriction based on the age of the deer. Only that it must have at least 4 points on one beam. An 8 point 2 year old is legal to shoot. That deer does not get “an extra couple years of breeding”. So when you say “An APR zone allows all bucks an extra couple years of breeding.”, that statement is simply false.

It’s seems like you’re repeating at least a couple mis-conceptions about APR so far. I do hope you reconsider and think about it while keeping the effects of natural selection in mind.

Snap, you seem to know your stuff so can you answer the questions below. I hadn’t really questioned the benefits of APR until today because most people cant give any sort of intelligent answer on why they’re against it.

I’ve been reading a bunch about this today, it’s too dang hot to do much else! It seems like most articles agree that culling inferior bucks has very little effect on the genetics of a herd. With that being said why are areas like Iowa where strict management is practiced through out the state not overrun with mature small antlered bucks?

I do hunt SE MN and mostly public and I’ve been impressed how much better the deer quality is compared to public in other parts of MN and WI. I even lived out in Fond du Lac area for a while which has some nice deer running around but no where near as many as I see in SE MN. Is it just that much better genetics to begin with and APR hasn’t been around long enough to effect the herd? If so is there any way to determine how long it would take to turn a deer herd into a bunch of small antlered bucks?

hillhiker wrote:

With that being said why are areas like Iowa where strict management is practiced through out the state not overrun with mature small antlered bucks?

Hello hillhiker, I don’t claim to be an expert on Iowa. I’ve never hunted there. But I don’t believe Iowa has any mandatory APR zones. Do you know?

That being said it’s very hard to have apple to apple comparisons on things like this. You have so many other factors involved when trying to compare county to county much less state to state. i.e hunter to deer ratio. hunter to land ratio. Geography. Climate, etc, etc, etc.

That’s why I first try to keep things simple and go from there. For instance if you owned of a deer farm that you managed for large racks, would your management practice involve randomly killing the large antlered deer and allowing all other small antlered deer to live to a ripe old age? That doesn’t seem like a recipe for success to me. Now, obviously things differ in the wild where you can’t 100% control all the other variables, but still. It’s seems like blatantly mis-guided strategy to me.

Is it just that much better genetics to begin with and APR hasn’t been around long enough to effect the herd? If so is there any way to determine how long it would take to turn a deer herd into a bunch of small antlered bucks?

My thought is that it would take many generations to affect the gene pool of an area the size of the SE MN zone. 20+ generations at least before you’d start noticing the effects. And ironically, in the short term, I would expect folks to notice more mature large antlered deer based on the same reasons most APR supporters site. But the long term effects seem pretty inevitable.

I don’t support APR for many reasons. I’ll give you my answers. I like to think they are intelligent answers so I hope they don’t disappoint you. 8)

1. APR puts selective pressure on the deer population to favor survival of small antlered deer which, in the long term, will tend the population towards small antlered deer.

2. I’m not in favor of inventing new ways to make criminals out of otherwise law abiding citizens.

3. APR forces hunters to accurately count tines. This is difficult under even the best of conditions. Otherwise peaceful hunters who simply mis-count tines now risk get fined, have your property confiscated, your hunting rights taken away or, if you choose to flee or resist, being assaulted, caged and/or killed in the process of enforcement. Laws are nothing to play with. They are enforced with violence.

4. APR imposes and forces a specific opinion or preference on everyone. The opinion that it’s superior to shoot a large antlered deer. I may even agree with this opinion but, as long as people are peaceful, I don’t choose to force my opinions on everyone else at the point of a government gun.

5. Adding new laws incrementally strain the budgets, resources and safety of the people who must enforce those laws.

6. From what I can tell, and this may be a highly biased opinion, the folks in MN who were the initial big proponents of APR couldn’t care less if it caused people to stop hunting, or to not start hunting, all-together. They simply wanted big deer for themselves and/or their customers.

I have no idea if Iowa has APR rules in place, but from what I have gathered just talking to people when I get down there for work, its the hunters that strictly manage on their own to try and grow big deer. This is especially true in specific areas of the state.

Snap wrote:

That’s why I first try to keep things simple and go from there. For instance if you owned of a deer farm that you managed for large racks, would your management practice involve randomly killing the large antlered deer and allowing all other small antlered deer to live to a ripe old age? That doesn’t seem like a recipe for success to me. Now, obviously things differ in the wild where you can’t 100% control all the other variables, but still. It’s seems like blatantly mis-guided strategy to me.

I don’t know if deer farms should be brought into a conversation about this. Letting the small deer live to a ripe old age is exactly what they do, and killing their largest deer would basically have zero effect on them other than a loss in revenue. Plus small antler genes have basically been bred out of their herds so regardless of what they kill and let grow they will have big deer. They’re also putting as much into does in many cases to manipulate the herd as they are the bucks. In the wild we have zero clue what kind of whacky genes does are throwing into their fawns.

Snap wrote:

2. I’m not in favor of inventing new ways to make criminals out of otherwise law abiding citizens.
3. APR forces hunters to accurately count tines. This is difficult under even the best of conditions. Otherwise peaceful hunters who simply mis-count tines now risk get fined, have your property confiscated, your hunting rights taken away or, if you choose to flee or resist, being assaulted, caged and/or killed in the process of enforcement. Laws are nothing to play with. They are enforced with violence.

This is one reason I have heard from many people that I have always struggled with a bit. If you cant take the time to count 4 points should you really be taking that shot? Are you shooting at running deer? Shooting through thick cover so you don’t know exactly what you’re shooting at? Wait, didn’t we learn not to do things like that in fire arm safety? Counting points just hasn’t seemed like a big problem to me, but that’s coming from someone who only bow hunts so things are normally pretty close and I always have binoculars on my chest.

It will be interesting to see how things go. I do appreciate someone with logical arguments about the subject. Often times it seems like people don’t like it just because they don’t. I sure hope deer don’t take a turn for the worse. I do enjoy chasing those brown critters around the valleys! Now has it cooled off enough to head out on the river?!

Snap wrote:

Hello Blackbay, i’m not aware of anyone funding research into this at the moment. Do you have any data showing that 4 point 7 year old deer don’t exist? Remember that natural selection doesn’t require large numbers at the onset. It only requires that at some point one exists and that selection criteria favors it. Time and evolution takes care of the rest.

Nice dodge of the question. I asked if you had something to show that all these alleged 4 pt 7 year olds were running around. You are the one to start the thread and post a link to a webpage that contains a hypothesis that proposes commercial offshore fishing can/could/maybe eventually change fish genetics so much that they only grow to a certain point. You then take this hypothesis and equate fish populations with deer populations all in an effort to make APR look bad. Nice try but your assumptions are off. You totally disregard that females contribute half of the genetic material of their offspring. You disregard nutrition. You disregard winter severity. You disregard predation. Your argument that APR’s are bad is based on you deciding what the outcome is first, only 4 pointers left, and then using just enough knowledge of wildlife biology and genetics to make it sound good.

I found this from Pennsylvania with a quick search. You might want to pay close attention to the biology:genetic impacts portion. https://www.pgc.pa.gov/Wildlife/WildlifeSpecies/White-tailedDeer/Pages/AntlerRestrictionsAreTheyWorking.aspx

hillhiker wrote:

I don’t know if deer farms should be brought into a conversation about this.

Agree it’s not a perfect model to say the least. But I think it can provide a place to start thinking about what a better model would look like.

hillhiker wrote:

Letting the small deer live to a ripe old age is exactly what they do,

Really? A large antler deer farm isn’t going to cull a 3-4 year old 4 point buck? Maybe we have different ideas on what a ripe old age means. What I mean by that phrase is that the 14 point monster typical is going to be kept for breeding until he stops being fertile. Like 8-10 years of age. Wheras 4 year old 4 pointer is never going to breed. He’s going to be table fare.

Or would you keep around the mature 4 pointer to breed your future generations? I’m not sure what purpose that would serve?

hillhiker wrote:

Plus small antler genes have basically been bred out of their herds so regardless of what they kill and let grow they will have big deer.

Agree. Assume this farm is just now starting out with a random sample from the wild. Would you keep the mature 4 pointers around when trying to breed future generations of larger antlered deer or would you get rid of them?

hillhiker wrote:

In the wild we have zero clue what kind of whacky genes does are throwing into their fawns.

Agreed. If it were found to be the case that antler size were 100% dependent on the does genetics in the herd than all my bets are off here. But even if only 1% came from the bucks then given enough time APR selection pressure would win out.

hillhiker wrote:

This is one reason I have heard from many people that I have always struggled with a bit.

And i’ve been dumbfounded after hearing the opposite side of the argument. It seems so incredibly self evident to me.

If you cant take the time to count 4 points should you really be taking that shot?

Yes. I can positively identify a deer and even a deer with antlers much easier than I can count tines on the antlers. I have been surprised by a different tine count than i’ve expected after shooting a deer. I’ve witnessed in person and heard stories of several other hunters doing the same. I’ve watched dozens of hunting videos where the shooter was surprised by a slightly different rack than they expected after shooting a deer. It seems fairly common to me. In none of these cases was it even remotely possible to mistake that deer for anything else but a deer before taking the shot. So trying to equate deathly dangerous and reckless behavior with failing to accurately count tines has always struck me as reaching for an argument that doesn’t exist.

I always have binoculars on my chest.

Maybe that’s the difference. And maybe that’s now a requirement. I rarely ever carry binoculars when deer hunting especially with the bow. I no longer hunt or buy permits for APR zones so I wouldn’t have reason to think that binoculars are de-facto required to hunt now.

Snap wrote:

<div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>hillhiker wrote:</div>

3. APR forces hunters to accurately count tines. This is difficult under even the best of conditions. Otherwise peaceful hunters who simply mis-count tines now risk get fined, have your property confiscated, your hunting rights taken away or, if you choose to flee or resist, being assaulted, caged and/or killed in the process of enforcement. Laws are nothing to play with. They are enforced with violence.

This statement is laughable..
No one in history has been shot and killed by law enforcement for registering a 6 point buck instead of a 7 point buck by mistake. Or no one has ever taken anyone’s land deed away for doing the same. You extremist statement here, discounts your “left field opinion” and your credibility.
Im glad that you moved and/or choose not to hunt in APR zones anymore, better quality hunting and larger bucks for the rest of them.
Ever wonder why APR restrictions are always applied to only the “best states” “best counties” with the highest deer numbers?
Why would the state of Colorado impose a APR on bull elk? Are they trying to dum down their genetics? If you know anything about elk… only the king gets to breed. So in your world they are forcing a world of spike bull elk. But I guess you most likely have some wild unproven theory about that as well.

This is not worth debating with non-rational type folks. Not worth the time. IMO. I was in for a good ol’ informative debate… up until you went off the deep end.

I hunt the apr zone and thus far haven’t had any problem counting tines and if [only twice] I did have some trouble deciding I let the deer pass. I did see one of the mega-sized 6 pointers at about five yards but… I see most of my deer well before they are anywhere close to being inside my shooting range and generally have plenty of counting time using the binocs. If the deer is running, it keeps running since I think shots at running deer in woods is foolhardy. You are right though…its forced me to count so I count. But that’s not my beef with apr enforcement.

The hypothesis on apr was that it would put more huge antlered deer in the woods for everybody. Bowhunters however seem to get the pick of the littler in this regard since they have 6 weeks of hunting before any gun hunter, outside of a special hunt, can even think of collecting one of the dream animals. If this apr stuff is supposed to serve everyone, let’s not allow ANY buck deer to be taken until one common opening day for buck deer so everyone is on the same common ground? Why should one faction have precedence over another? If I am being force to count tines and and have to pass on a lesser buck, why can’t it be fair to have the apr proponents give up something too?

APRs have maybe put more larger deer in the woods but it has also put more unshootable male deer in the whole zone and its been shown now that more males than female deer are the carriers of cwd. So yes, more big horn, but now its cwd that is spreading as fast as the male deer.

The issue with apr is that it was totally un-needed down in the SE corner. Plenty of huge deer existed before arp and the only reason the arp got installed was because it was bought by lazy people thinking they deserve to be able to shoot a big deer every year. There were plenty big deer here, all they had to do was hunt them. This is just like a baseball team stacking the batters box with home run hitters….sooner or later the deficiencies of doing so will become apparent with that team having not won a championship. Same exact scenario here with apr.

As for Colorado….if I am not mistaken when the state was looking at apr one of the chief proponents got shut down, then took a high level job here in Minnesota, where once again he pushed his east coast idiocy on this state and we now have apr.

APR….already past damaging