<div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>BigWerm wrote:</div>
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.
So to be clear you think there are a plethora of 2 year old 8+ pointers getting shot, as well as a bunch of old 4 point bucks, and the combination of this is resulting in a weaker genetic makeup in bluff country. I’m going to have to agree to disagree. There are way more spike and basket racks taken from non-apr zones, than there are 2 year old 8 pointers in an APR zone. And any (of a VERY small subset) 4 point old bucks are not going to be the dominant breeders as evolution has shown a buck hierarchy is established based, at least partially, on rack size (big racks run off little racks).
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 some circular logic Tom. On one hand you didn’t need APR because there were plenty of big bucks, if people just hunted them. But now that there is APR all the bow hunters are getting the big bucks before rifle season. Shouldn’t you just stop being lazy to hunt the big deer that are still there?
