Guess I’m in the minority, my passion is turkey hunting, but let me find a buck with potential and I’ll learn everything I can about him and watch him grow until I want to take him. Here in Georgia I can shoot 2 bucks and 10 does. No such thing as a meat buck, lol. We try and let bucks reach 3.5 - 4.5 before pulling the trigger. Any 8pt or smaller at 4.5 will get a bullet because that’s all they’ll ever be. 10pts or better get to at least 5.5 and then it’s up to you. We talked a guy into passing a deer last year and I found his sheds Sunday. It scores 133” as a 4.5yr old 9pt based on a 15” spread. That deer could potentially be 150” next year and will be this young man’s biggest deer ever. The fact I know he wanted him, I won’t shoot if he comes by me, not that he’s anywhere near my area, but if he did, lol.
I can’t speak for everyone, but I will say this, after killing a big deer something changed inside me. I’m no longer about “me” a big deer. Don’t get me wrong, if I find a nice buck, I will hunt him or keep up with him. But now it’s more about helping someone else, who has put in the time, to kill a big buck. To watch the progression of just wanting to shoot anything with antlers to showing restraint and it finally come together for them is just something I can’t explain.
Now this coming season will be a doe slaughter because we didn’t kill near enough last year.
And we also manage for turkeys as well. 2500ac and we take no more than 3. Some years only 2 and only one year I can think of we took 4. We had some kids that had never killed a turkey and we had to help out. No jakes no matter how old you are. There’s plenty of gobblers to wait on and kill.