Originally Posted by Pwyse
Originally Posted by Mbrock
How you manage harvest is entirely dependent on objectives. There’s no wrong way, unless it’s not objective based, then there’s lots of wrong ways.

For most applications with multiple members a minimum beam or inside spread limit is likely the best way.

Or, you can decide not to harvest more than 20-30% of each age class, in all age classes, ensuring recruitment across the board.

In trophy management, which is rarely practiced, it takes an age based approach AND selective harvest of certain bucks in younger age classes, to work like it should. Most folks are not agreeable to what this takes and either give up or never commit from the beginning.


Just curious, what young bucks do you select and why?

This method really works best on areas with limited ingress and egress. It could be islands, geographically isolated properties, LARGE free range properties and enclosures. If you’re trying to get bucks to the upper age classes, like 6-8 years old, then you simply can’t allow all of them to get there without an extraordinary amount of social stress and competition. Usually selecting deer at younger age classes in the lower 1/2 of antler development is what is done. It removes mouths, competition, stress and allows deer in the upper percentile from each age class to thrive. Most folks will not successfully do this because they can’t buy in fully and it takes commitment. It’s pretty common in fenced properties, but works amazingly well on large cooperatives too.