Shame them.
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Hunting season is well under way in most places. When you see a tiny little set of hardware on top of the head of a critter... make sure you shame the owner properly. People give all kinds of excuses for shooting tiny bucks all the time... but that's all they are, justifications and excuses. If we can't stop those people from shooting runts every single year, then none of us will ever get an opportunity at trophy animals.
If they have a buck only tag, they can go home empty. If they have an "any" tag, they can shoot a doe. If they'd just NOT shoot a tiny buck or bull for 3 years in a row... the fourth year, nearly everyone would take a trophy home. ... and every year after that.
Sure, if they are all big, then ONLY the biggest will be considered a trophy... but at least there will be an opportunity for something real.
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No minimum requirements for that state? The parks and wildlife implemented minimum antler requirements for numerous counties here in Texas and it has turned those river bottom runt deer into more desirable animals. The meat hunters didn't like it too much. I'm talking whitetail deer I'm not sure about mule deer further out west. My neighbors ranch north of mine had a rule if you shot a buck you mounted it. My cousins place is managed and they won't pull the trigger on just anything and the guide running it comes up with a number of how many and what age they harvest. It's low fence so no trapped deer and they do put corn out but not all year. Too many pigs for one thing. I don't think he's feeding protein either just depending on their diet of native plants and they seem to be doing good. Main thing is what you are talking about, proper management of the animals.
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@bigfoot No restrictions here... they hand out buck tags like candy and most people shoot dinks every single year.
There are always more doe's around than bucks... so if they are truly "meat-hunters" as they claim to be... then they'd shoot better tasting meat from a female animal.
Regular to see 10-12" antelope and 50-100" whitetail and mule deer shot. Those whitetail pics I posted the other day... if anyone sees them... they'll get blasted for sure.
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Doe control is necessary for a healthy buck population I have been taught. Bucks seem to want to spend more time fighting than breeding when there's an abundance of does. Don't know about antelopes guess they have their own nature. My hunting buddy down here has taken on a ranch of about a thousand acres owned by his sisters husbands family. They don't have any water sources on it and is perfect for whitetail they just never developed it. I guess he's been there about seven years and made watering places with plastic wading pools and convinced his brother in law to get the well going and try to keep water there. He has fed a little protein and he and his sons have been shooting out the old spikes and otherwise dud deer and put up lots of cameras to see what was really in there at night. Two big problems they found as to why there wasn't any "good" deer. One was a pig control trapper and hunter that was allowed in there. He did way more than trap pigs, cameras caught him. He just about annihilated the turkey population too. I would have had him thrown in the pokey. The other was the Department of Criminal Justice had permission to train officers how to catch prisoners with bloodhounds on horseback in that place. That was a no brainer. Unloading a trailer full of hounds and horses in the fall chasing trustees. They finally put them on a schedule that wasn't conflicting with hunting season and they may have stopped altogether now. They had a bad habit of just showing up unannounced. He came up on a riderless horse one time and a couple of inmates were sitting under a tree resting and him with a .270. That could have been bad. The place has only gotten better and some deer worthy of mounting have been taken but seven years isn't long enough. He might be half way there.
