I think it is. I have a friend who owns 60 sections of land locked private land, no public access. He and his family can take the older age class bucks off it in one year and set it back for a year or two in trophy quality. The point of my post is that older age class bucks(higher quality antler growth) are very sensitive to harvest. Even one year of high success harvest of the older age class bucks 4-11 years old can take an entire unit down a step in quality and age class very fast.
I think it depends a lot on the unit and how it gets hunted, I can think of examples of units where most of the bucks rut on leased private land where it will have very little impact, not in the outfitter's interest to overharvest so no matter how many tags and how late they are it won't significantly change... on the other hand units where bucks mostly rut on public land it has the potential to have a huge impact, a couple of days can be the change from the older age class being killed moving from a 3.5-year-old to a 5.5-year-old as said above, there just aren't that many 5.5-year-old and older bucks roaming around, start killing more than the occasional one and quality goes down really quick.
I find this statement hard to believe. 60 sections is 60 square miles?? No way 1 family is harvesting enough mature bucks in 1 year to do what your saying. Unless there are 60 family members or not prime habitat covering that area. But I will let you go on
1
that's how I read it, I think the objective to reduce the percentage of mature bucks for CWD reasons will have some general population level effects just because of additional tags, a tremendous amount of hunters are in the "if it's brown it's down" camp and releasing additional tags will lead to increased overall harvest, not just big bucks, if anything it will lead to a higher percentage of young bucks harvested since they have no brains to start with... having been around CO for a while I can say that there was a day where you could set out to get a 190 buck and realistically expect to do so in a couple of years if you were dedicated to it, I don't think that is very realistic now...
Depends entirely on the habits of hunters.
as @wllm says it depends on how hunters use it, but it will be the driver to some extent, I should post pictures of my yard bucks as an example, they are rutting to the point where fighting deer are waking me up regularly right now but the biggest bucks are a pair of 170's ish bucks, based on past experience within the next week or so a giant that I can't find the rest of the year will pop out of the woodwork for 4-5 days and then disappear, maybe to pop back up the same time next year, there are two or three bucks like this that I see almost every year, an entirely different kind of deer than the "kinda old, kinda big" bucks that are a dime a dozen in my subdivision... if the season is open when this happens it is likely the only time anyone would have a chance at those bucks, and it is a difference of a couple of days... if you can't hunt late someone would have to get incredibly lucky to catch one of those old bucks during daylight, when a week later they are chasing a doe across a road at noon...
Yeah. 4-5 bucks in a year on this ranch make up that small spot on the normal curve of outstanding genetics and age class. This is sagebrush country. Not sure what the deer densities would be. I will guess 7 per sq. mile-ish.
Right. I saw a ridiculous amount of deer. Just age class of bucks due to their sensitivity to harvest during the rut
I don't know the ranch @rogerthat is talking about but I could easily see his claim happening. All depends on what the neighbors do, If there are other owners with in holdings and if there are public roads.
