@rnewste, did your son have that elk scored? What did he kill it with? Did you he ship you any meat? I've never eaten elk. I've read, depending on the author, that pronghorn is either the worst/toughest meat, or the best, but I've never had that either. I talked to a guy last year with mule deer. Four of them came back with I think 3 mulies. He said it was terrible compared to whitetail. They were having sausage made.
@Don, I didn't mean cull in that way, just herd reduction. Looks like there 142 tags spread across 14 zones this year. Talk about tightly regulated. You can pay into the lottery each year and build pref points...if you are picked you get the opportunity to pay more for a tag. If you draw one of the 32 antlered tags then you can't apply again for 5 years. That kind of spreads it around which is nice, but I honestly think it should be 10 years antlered and 5 years for antlerless as well, if I understand those numbers. 142 tags a year for a million licensed hunters? They have a real racket going at $11.90 per lottery ticket. On second thought, yeah, that sounds just right for PA!
But yeah, I am a meat hunter. Antlers are nice but you can't eat them. Some of my best memories are the smaller racks or does. Mostly though, I hunt birds, me and the dogs.
I do think the best thing to do for genetics is protect the trophy bucks, but it would never, ever work here. In fact for nearly 20 years, we do just the opposite in PA - our game commission protects the spikes and forkhorns that DON'T develop a nice rack at 1-1/2 yo. A legal buck must have a minimum 3 or 4 points a side (by region). So, the good genetic 6 and 8 point 1-1/2 yo deer are perfectly legal to kill while they are young and dumb. I have seen many young 7pt basket racks killed. Meanwhile, some of those scrub bucks may never be legal, but are protected to breed each year they fail to achieve big enough antlers, no matter the body size or age.
The first year with antler restrictions I passed on a possible 6 pt in archery I wasn't sure about...I couldn't tell at 12 yards so I never even bent my recurve. I passed on multiple spikes and forkhorns that were clearly protected. Ended up killing a nice 8pt in rifle season. He was 20 yards in trail of a hot doe and oblivious to me with a rifle 50 yards away. A few days later I was back in that same area on stillhunting on fresh snow and killed a doe, very possibly the same one, bedded alone with a buck under a pine. That buck she had sequestered? A 6" spike. Probably had been scoped out and passed on fifteen times that year, but allowed to live to breed due to the antler restrictions.
|