Whitetail Deer Management in Oklahoma........

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AllOut

Sharpshooter
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Hiding from all you crazy people!!!
I do agree with a lot of what has been mentioned on this thread, but I do feel like sometimes the allure of large antlers pulls out the negative in some of us. I'm getting to the point that I hate to hear people complain about the person shooting a little buck. Heck, we all started somewhere and I'm sure most of us didn't kill a monster our first couple of years out. But if you remember back to when you were first starting out, you only dreamed of a buck probably didn't really care if it was huge or not. I've unfortunately witnessed our drive for large antlers lead to some pretty bad things being said to some people at the hunter check in stations. I'm glad there gone to be honest. I set my own limits and goals but I no longer try to get everyone else to think like I do.

As odd as it sounds, I never did...
From day one when I was young and first started bow hunting I've never had the desire to kill small or young bucks. My first year hunting I passed on lot of bucks early season then ended up killing a nice mature 8 during the rut. That was also on public land. I killed a couple does that year too on the same place.
To this day (other then a cull 7 killed in Mexico) it's the smallest buck I've ever killed, and it's still a decent buck. Since then I've almost averaged at least one mature trophy class buck a year.
Honestly, I blame it on TV.
Seriously, I watched hunting shows for years before I ever got to hunt. No one in my family hunted so I learned everything on my own. But seeing those big bucks on TV, I knew that's what I wanted and wasn't going to settle for anything less.

I agree with you though, big antlers can bring out the worst in people.
I don't look down on someone for killing what they kill. Personally I want everyone to enjoy hunting. But if put to a vote, obviously I'm gonna vote for what benefits my wants and needs.
 

retrieverman

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Ya'll want to blame high lease prices on out of staters, but rich Okies are your real problem. Dalyup can back me up on this and can correct any of the details I may have wrong, but there were three guys from OKC who leased 900 acres between our places and, from what I heard, paid something like $27k per year for hunting rights. The place borders our east fence and Dalyup's west fence, and most of the land is "wetlands" or cow pasture. The "hunters" set up stands along the fences and were basically trying to draw deer off of us. They had pop up blinds literally tied to our fences, and they had the legs of a stand over the fence on Dalyup's place.

The guys that have the place leased now aren't much better and have stands facing into our place. Needless to say, I am very diligent about wearing orange.

Rich idiots are rich idiots no matter what state is on their license plate.
 

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