That's pretty much where we wound up. I have some dandies on the wall, biggest is 148 and I'm not interested in killing a buck just because he would score 125. I'm looking for 135-140 these days. Needless to say, I don't kill many bucks but I enjoy being out there as much as I ever have. I passed up 4 mature bucks in the mid 120s during the last 2 weeks of the season this year. I was basically scouting for 1 for my grandson to put on the wall. Didn't happen

Here's the thing about high grading.....With age based management, that 130" three year old is typically still getting shot by someone just the same.

Not on the right property he’s not. Wouldn’t even be a consideration.

But yes there’s a lot of places that talk a big game until he steps out. Then the excuses start. “Thought he was older, mistaken identity, had to make a fast decision”….etc

Better hope its a BIG property......

Here you go......3 year old shot on a small property bordering a "trophy" club....

It definitely will happen on neighboring properties.

Doesn’t always have to be a big property, though that certainly can help. I’m hunting a relatively small property. We have far less pressure on our property compared to surrounding neighbors and we work hard at keeping it that way. What I often see when a buck gets 3.5 is he’s either suicidal, daylighting everywhere, or he’s already in survivor mode. If he’s a walker then he’s a dead man for sure and score one for the neighbors. If he’s a little more inclined to be neurotically cautious, he’ll stick to the low pressure area and limit his travels outside of that area to night missions. I get these bucks on camera regularly but only within a confined area of safety. The walker personality buck will hit every camera I have over a square mile, and twice a day on some days. Once I can identify the homebody at 3.5, he almost always becomes more so at 4.5 (providing he survived) so I have hope, but by no means a guarantee, that letting him walk is a low risk. But again, it’s kinda like betting on racehorses. Lots can go wrong.

Here’s another one…….Both of these deer weighed about 135 lbs…..Anyone here letting them walk??.....That’s the reality of the age based harvesting we do in this state…..We still high grade in the vast majority of situations…..We shoot for 4 or 5 year olds until that rack steps out.

Yes.

So I’m not in any way bashing the folks who shot these deer but rather just using them as examples of what’s actually occurring as far as our discussion here goes……The second one was shot by a doctor who goes on all kinds of out of state hunts…..That was his biggest bow kill ever in Alabama……There are VERY, VERY few people letting these deer walk. Even if you are one of the VERY, VERY few who lets him walk…..you better have a lot of land because no one else is…….There’s a big difference in theory versus actual application…….Age based harvesting is great in theory but doesn’t really work out that well in Alabama when actually put into practice by everyone. Everything is still high graded…..very few slip through the cracks.

I will stick by my original statement…….We would have better age structure today if this “shooting for age” stuff would have never come along and we were still just shooting for “big bucks”.....We would be better off having all of these 4 year old or better clubs be 125" or better clubs

It would be tough for me to let those deer walk with a bow CNC. They are exceptional 3 year olds. But I could do it. I’ve let a few 120” deer walk with a bow. One was probably 4 but I wasn’t confident in it.

But, you are talking about exceptions to the rule. 99% of the 3 year olds in Alabama don’t look like that. So you are talking about a very small number of deer that the 4+ year old clubs are shooting that are 3. And theres a chance those deer are older than they look. They may just be petite with a big rack 🤣

What about this one?.....They actually arent that rare…..They’re the normal top end 3 year olds when all bucks are allowed to get to that age…..A lot of these high end deer are even being high graded at 2……There very few that ever make it to 5 or 6 even using an age based system…..They got shot just the same as they would on a score based system.

Yalls deer must be different than mine. Very few times have I ever had a buck stand there long enough to get even a point count, much less a birth certificate.

I think we've gone past reality..... Most going to shoot these deer because that's the biggest deer they would see.

Why? Is that not the real question at hand?

If they saw deer this size regularly maybe they wouldn't but I can't say that would be the case... why? I would say the average antlered deer killed in AL is a 4 pointer. I find it hard to believe most deer hunters can't shoot a better quality deer but they don't. Why would they wait on a deer this size? They can't eat them horns! We got a bunch out there that do this like a rabbit hunt because that is the mentality we have bred with years of liberal harvest regs.

That's Reality. You can't police people on a metric that is arbitrary like age. Points are not arbitrary. That's why it works but not perfect. I would agree points are nowhere near as good as shooting based on age. It's just not reality. I wish it was but it is with 100% certainty NOT.

The two comments above sums it up. I wouldn't give a crap if those deer above were astonomical 1.5 YOs. I, along with 98% of the hunters in AL (maybe more), are going to kill them and be elated.

This post may apply to a few areas in the state where folks actually want 6-8 YOs... but for the vast majority, letting animals like what's posted above walk is NOT reality. And it wont be 50 years from now either.

135 lbs live weight is tiny. Looks like he's long arming it a little too. Nice , young buck for sure.

I'm not going to say thats a young buck. Not all bucks grow the same way and weight

Weight is not a good indicator of age. I’d need to know more than a weight too. There’s a few properties I’ve managed where mature buck weights can vary by 100 lbs at the same time of year.

It was opening day of bow season on the ten point that 2dogs tagged.......I'll say that I didnt look at the jawbone on any of those but they all looked obviously young to me and the hunter in each situation......