Trophy Debate

[gizmo]

I agree and I've also stated that too. What works in Texas on free range whitetail doesn't necessarily work in England on game preserves or Africa on high fenced ranches. Facts are facts though and the potential to do the most damage to a given herd is to to target immature males. A great example of this is exactly what enyesse was talking about in Wisconsin about not being able to ever see a good deer. Are there a lot of deer in Wisconsin, absolutely. Are there trophy deer in Wisconsin, no there are not. Why, poor conservation. Hunters pop the first horned buck they see. This is seen time and time again.

 

[WRudman]

Norwegianwoods I might only add that the most efficient way of culling animals is to remove the females. Also you have to be very very careful removing immature males, as a culling tool, as it upsets you buck to doe ratios. That's why for every buck we kill we have to remove 2 does. You also have to understand that buck mortality rates are much higher. That's a key point many forget. The stress of the rut, fighting, vehicle accidents, etc effects bucks and mainly young bucks the hardest.
The way I've been taught and the biologists have pounded in my head is simply you dont shoot immature animals period. Am I saying its the end of the universe if one immature animal is taken, no I am not. I'm simply saying either your serious about conservation or your not. Also I have to agree with Simon on that from the pictures the land owner has posted of the piles of kudu, the bulk of what I see are immature animals. Now, it's not my property and it doesn't effect me one bit so not a whole lot I have a right to say about it other than my original statement of that your either serious about conservation or your not. It's sad that far too many people cave on proper management plans all in the name of the all mighty dollar.

My apologies, maybe this is a better angle

 

[gizmo]

I'll reframe the issue. What if it had been an immature elephant. What then. Is a trophy still in the eye of the beholder?
My guess is this; no it's not, why?
Are elephants more important?
Maybe so, but because why? There are less of them, less spectacular of a trophy, kudu everywhere?
Fact is conservation is conservation. It doesn't matter wether it's a duiker or and Indian rhino, we owe it to animals to be the best managers we can.

 

[gizmo]

My apologies, maybe this is a better angle

View attachment 48952

Sir i actually owe you an oppology as, after re-reading it, my first statement came across as a cheap shot towards you and it wasn't intended that way.
1)The first picture yes it appeared to be a lot of immature kudu.
2) you are the land owner and have the right to manage it in anyway you see fit and whatever works best through years of experience in your particular ecosystem.
3) as managers we, collectively, are either serious about conservation or not.
4) generalized statement- far too often managers throw a management plan out the window to make a few extra dollars. Not intended at you

 

[WRudman]

Management is a key issue, unfortunately each specie has to be managed differently according to i.e. terrain, vegetation, rainfall etc. etc. What I don't believe in is the breeding of colour variants that is taking our country by storm. We work on percentages to take off, so many females, so many males, then we break that up into age groups. You are judging body size horn length, horn confirmation etc. Pretty same as working with your domestic stock. You have only so much food on the veld available, therefore veld management is vital. Our average rainfall is less than the Kalahari (If you saw the ranch at the moment you would not say it)

 

[WRudman]

Sir i actually owe you an oppology as, after re-reading it, my first statement came across as a cheap shot towards you and it wasn't intended that way.
1)The first picture yes it appeared to be a lot of immature kudu.
2) you are the land owner and have the right to manage it in anyway you see fit and whatever works best through years of experience in your particular ecosystem.
3) as managers we, collectively, are either serious about conservation or not.
4) generalized statement- far too often managers throw a management plan out the window to make a few extra dollars. Not intended at you

Don't need to apologise, it is always good to see that there are people interested in the good of the animal kingdom!

 

[gizmo]

Yes sir, I was actually just in the Alicedale, Port Elizabeth area two months ago. I was amazed at how green it was. I was told that was the most rainfall ya'll have had in a very long time. Almost all of the run off streams were running which I was told was very unusual of that time of year.

 

[gizmo]

Don't need to apologise, it is always good to see that there are people interested in the good of the animal kingdom!

I appreciate that but I feel that I did as I wasn't intending on taking a shot at you I just articulated my points poorly.

 

[WRudman]

Yes sir, I was actually just in the Alicedale, Port Elizabeth area two months ago. I was amazed at how green it was. I was told that was the most rainfall ya'll have had in a very long time. Almost all of the run off streams were running which I was told was very unusual of that time of year.

Yes we have been very fortunate, best winter and spring that I have ever experienced in my life. Next time you visit the RSA, send me a message and we can get together have a coffee and a chat.

 

[gizmo]

Management is a key issue, unfortunately each specie has to be managed differently according to i.e. terrain, vegetation, rainfall etc. etc. What I don't believe in is the breeding of colour variants that is taking our country by storm. We work on percentages to take off, so many females, so many males, then we break that up into age groups. You are judging body size horn length, horn confirmation etc. Pretty same as working with your domestic stock. You have only so much food on the veld available, therefore veld management is vital. Our average rainfall is less than the Kalahari (If you saw the ranch at the moment you would not say it)

I don't know enough about the color variant issue to have an opinion. I would some day like to finish my springbuck slam as I truely enjoyed hunting them. One of the most fun hunts I've ever been on. Maybe you could enlighten me a bit on this issue as I have very little experience in this area.

 

[gizmo]

Yes we have been very fortunate, best winter and spring that I have ever experienced in my life. Next time you visit the RSA, send me a message and we can get together have a coffee and a chat.

I will do that and would very much enjoy that.

 

[thi9elsp]

Norwegianwoods I might only add that the most efficient way of culling animals is to remove the females. Also you have to be very very careful removing immature males, as a culling tool, as it upsets you buck to doe ratios. That's why for every buck we kill we have to remove 2 does. You also have to understand that buck mortality rates are much higher. That's a key point many forget. The stress of the rut, fighting, vehicle accidents, etc effects bucks and mainly young bucks the hardest.
The way I've been taught and the biologists have pounded in my head is simply you dont shoot immature animals period. Am I saying its the end of the universe if one immature animal is taken, no I am not. I'm simply saying either your serious about conservation or your not. Also I have to agree with Simon on that from the pictures the land owner has posted of the piles of kudu, the bulk of what I see are immature animals. Now, it's not my property and it doesn't effect me one bit so not a whole lot I have a right to say about it other than my original statement of that your either serious about conservation or your not. It's sad that far too many people cave on proper management plans all in the name of the all mighty dollar.

Eric,

I agree with your points and points others have made. My own experience during the mid-90's in Texas supported a focus on taking out 3 does and only 1 mature buck per hunter on our lease. After 2 years we were already seeing increased body size and antler growth on our bucks. And, increased sightings of bucks.

Then, of course, the landowner increased our rates by 20%. I think all of us would have been ok with a 10% increase every other year but 20% in one year was too much. It was rather disheartening to the 8 of us as we had invested in improving the hunting, yet there wasn't an investment on the landowners part to continue to have us at a fair rate. So, we dropped the lease, removed all of our feeders and camp trailer. Rancher got to keep the improvements we had made to the bunkhouse. And off we went to find a reasonable priced place to hunt. It's experiences like this that can make the hunter less than supportive of the landowners goals.

John

 

[gizmo]

John you are spot on. That's why I don't lease land. I would like to as its a cheap alternative to buying more land. I am not willing to spend money on someone else's property to get nothing in return.

 

[siml]

Gizmo, great insight.

 

[Norwegianwoods]

Norwegianwoods I might only add that the most efficient way of culling animals is to remove the females. Also you have to be very very careful removing immature males, as a culling tool, as it upsets you buck to doe ratios. That's why for every buck we kill we have to remove 2 does. You also have to understand that buck mortality rates are much higher. That's a key point many forget. The stress of the rut, fighting, vehicle accidents, etc effects bucks and mainly young bucks the hardest.
The way I've been taught and the biologists have pounded in my head is simply you dont shoot immature animals period. Am I saying its the end of the universe if one immature animal is taken, no I am not. I'm simply saying either your serious about conservation or your not. Also I have to agree with Simon on that from the pictures the land owner has posted of the piles of kudu, the bulk of what I see are immature animals. Now, it's not my property and it doesn't effect me one bit so not a whole lot I have a right to say about it other than my original statement of that your either serious about conservation or your not. It's sad that far too many people cave on proper management plans all in the name of the all mighty dollar.

I agree if your goal is to reduce the herd, then removing females is the most efficient method and I don't buy any claims of reducing the male population as a management tool to reduce the population when trophy hunting is your main goal.

I don't know enough about whitetails to say anything for sure about them, but I have rather much knowledge about Roe deer, Fallow deer and Red deer.
One of the reasons why you mainly have a high fatality rate of young bucks to vehicle accidents is exactly the high number of bucks in general and specially a high number of young bucks in any given area.
This high density will most of the time result in many of the young bucks running around looking for "greener" pastures and they will then often fall victims of a vehicle accident.
Does accept much higher densities among them than bucks do.
I have after many years of experience learned that it is possible to reduce the number of road kills by a lot if you shoot some button bucks and some young bucks to reduce the number of young bucks in an area as the reduced buck density most of the time results in them looking for "greener" pastures much less.
This is also the best way to manage your hunting area if your main focus is to get as much meat in the freezer as possible and still hunt in a sustainable way.

When a buck to doe ratio is talked about, it is very often about managing your property/area for trophies first and foremost.
And when most people talk about the quality of the herd, they most of the time mean the trophy quality of the bucks.
It doesn't take that many bucks to breed the does in any given population.
Specially with deer species that are not very territorial.
Even when it comes to Roe deer that are extremely territorial, it doesn't take lots of bucks to breed the does in any given area.
The buck to doe ratio needs to be extremely out of wack to result in not all does being bred.

What a good buck to doe ratio translates to from a trophy management/hunting point of view, is often these 2 reasons.
The main reason is that your area can only sustain a maximum amount of deer, or both the health and quality of the animals will suffer.
If your focus is having as many trophy bucks as possible, you will need to keep the doe numbers down to sustain a good number of bucks.
Another reason is to have a good chance of tagging a trophy buck, you both want as many trophy bucks as possible in the area, but you also want as many of them as possible visible during the rut.
If you have plenty of does for all the bucks, the bucks will most of the time be hung up with a doe and they will not need to cruise a lot around to find does ready to breed as the competition is not so fierce.
So you want the bucks to spend a lot of time trying to find does that are not occupied with another buck and ready to breed, as this will highly increase your odds of tagging a big one.

When it comes to Kudu, that this thread really was about, I know even way less than I do about whitetails

 

[gizmo]

Your pretty spot on! The thing is Texas has the largest whitetail deer herd in North America with over 1 million animals. This doesn't include our mule deer. Mule deer by nature are very nomadic. This attributed to many of the accidents. Whitetail are very abundant and the younger bucks tend to roam as mature deer are very territorial during the rut. That being said whitetail and mule deer both group into bachelor herds during non breeding times of year. With a high deer population and high people populations vehicle accidents are unavoidable. The bucks take the majority of the brunt as they move more. Does are more home bodies (in whitetail).

 

[enysse]

I have after many years of experience learned that it is possible to reduce the number of road kills by a lot if you shoot some button bucks and some young bucks to reduce the number of young bucks in an area as the reduced buck density most of the time results in them looking for "greener" pastures much less.

Bucks distribute so there is not interbreeding, it is best for any species. I find the distribution of bucks is good for nature. Yes, there is always a high mortality until they find a new territory. I'm maybe ok with shooting a year and half old buck because at least there is some meat there but not so with a button buck. To me it's a waste of resource. It's body is mostly uneatable tissue....very little meat. Wildlife biologist will tell you the wolves, coyote, the winter will get them anyway.....but that is just because the habitat is mismanaged and predator population...thanks in part to the anti's is way out of control.
In a way when deer are young, I believe nature should take it's course...but when they get older humans should step in and level the playing field.

 

[siml]

True Enysse. Especially if you look at southern parts of Africa, there aren't lions, leopards etc roaming around.

 

[Norwegianwoods]

Bucks distribute so there is not interbreeding, it is best for any species. I find the distribution of bucks is good for nature. Yes, there is always a high mortality until they find a new territory. I'm maybe ok with shooting a year and half old buck because at least there is some meat there but not so with a button buck. To me it's a waste of resource. It's body is mostly uneatable tissue....very little meat. Wildlife biologist will tell you the wolves, coyote, the winter will get them anyway.....but that is just because the habitat is mismanaged and predator population...thanks in part to the anti's is way out of control.
In a way when deer are young, I believe nature should take it's course...but when they get older humans should step in and level the playing field.

Yes, the distribution is good to avoid interbreeding, but if the density of bucks are very high in a large area, the younger bucks travel much longer and much more to find a place to settle down and this results in much higher risk of mortality.
I have found that the number of young bucks in my hunting areas has been about the same when spring arrives again, no matter if I shoot non or rather many of the button bucks and 1 1/2 year old bucks during the autumn the year before.

When it comes to shooting button bucks, then I first of all think they are good eating and secondly do I totally prefer to eat them myself than having wolves, lynxes, foxes, ravens and others feast on them during the winter.
And when it comes to habitat management and wanting to produce as much meat from the deer herd as possible, then shooting a rather high percentage of the new production(this years fawns) during their first autumn, is one of if not the best way.

But of course, if trophy management/hunting is your goal, then you should avoid to shoot any bucks at all til they have reached maturity at around 4 1/2-5 1/2 years.

 

[Scott Slough]

Bucks distribute so there is not interbreeding, it is best for any species. ...

Young bucks distribute to keep from getting their ass kicked by the dominant buck. If you shoot everything with horns so that there are no mature bucks, the young guys will stay put. It has also been suggested that if you have good even aged distribution they will often stay put ... for whitetails at least!