I'm a member now at arkansashunting.net. It's nowhere near as good as OSA, but I like getting feedback on local issues.
With the opening of bow season, everyone is posting pictures of their deer. There's been a lot of debate on there about what classifies a trophy. To put it simply, it's been bothering me. I'm getting pretty tired of armchair biology experts claiming that they know all about deer genetics, and that they're helping the deer population by killing bucks with less-than-satisfactory racks.
My problem is this. Is rack size the sole determinant of a quality buck? If having a small rack was actually a hindrance to successful reproduction, wouldn't spikes and bucks with sloppy racks be naturally selected against? If that were the case, then the deer population would evolve not to have spikes and bucks with trashy racks.
But apparently, nature's own method of taking care of bad genetics has failed miserably, so luckily we've appointed people to take care of the problem for us. People like...
This guy
http://www.arkansashunting.net/showthread.php?t=83276
With the opening of bow season, everyone is posting pictures of their deer. There's been a lot of debate on there about what classifies a trophy. To put it simply, it's been bothering me. I'm getting pretty tired of armchair biology experts claiming that they know all about deer genetics, and that they're helping the deer population by killing bucks with less-than-satisfactory racks.
My problem is this. Is rack size the sole determinant of a quality buck? If having a small rack was actually a hindrance to successful reproduction, wouldn't spikes and bucks with sloppy racks be naturally selected against? If that were the case, then the deer population would evolve not to have spikes and bucks with trashy racks.
But apparently, nature's own method of taking care of bad genetics has failed miserably, so luckily we've appointed people to take care of the problem for us. People like...
This guy
http://www.arkansashunting.net/showthread.php?t=83276