I dont think that there is anything wrong with age based harvesting. Once bucks get to be 4 yrs old and beyond, they become fairly hard to kill during legal shooting hours. Rare is the situation where you can overharvest fully mature bucks or shoot out an entire age class of mature bucks. More die from old age, injury and sickness than hunter's weapons once they get past 4. At least in Alabama.

I also dont think that there is anything at all wrong with harvesting bucks from all age classes in a heavily managed environment and if it is done in moderation. One where you know what you have and what and how many from each age class are actually being harvested and how many you are carrying forward in each age class.

I'm 100% against harvesting by score. Harvesting by score leads to high grading and removing your best genetics from your herd at ages 2 and 3 when they are producing some very good headgear for their age but still young, dumb and easily killable and haven't gotten "mature smart" yet. It's exceptionally easy to overharvest the younger age classes of 1-3 yr old bucks. They are very visible and very easy to kill and that's why very few bucks make it into the older age classes in AL. Goes back to that lack of trigger restraint and the "might as well kill that pretty rack deer because if I dont kill that rack buck, my neighbor will, plus I can brag to my buddies that I killed an 8 pt last weekend" that we discuss so often on here.