mplane 72 How many dollars do you spend each year planting beans and corn that the free ranging Iowa deer herd feed on. I fail to see what TRUE affect LOT have on the deer population. I would be willing to wager 90 % of the landowners could care less about shooting monster bucks. I think the "if its brown its down" attitude of SOME large group hunters has more of an affect on population and age class of the bucks. The one thing we must all understand is NOT EVERYONE THAT DEER HUNTS CARE ABOUT LARGE RACKS. I would say the majority are after venison to put in the freezer. And that's OK if we all thought the same way it would be a very boring world. We have some of the best whitetail hunting in the world here in Iowa and part of that is due to the abundance of the corn and beans they feed on.
First, I'm not looking for a pissing match. If someone wants to have an honest conversation, even a debate, about the subject I'm game. If you want to tell me why my thinking is wrong fine. If your just going to get your dander up because my idea threatens you we have nothing to discuss.
I said I don't own any land and I don't farm so obviously I don't spend any money planting anything. What's your point? Land owners are more entitled to a publicly held resource then non-landowners? If that's were our thinking is going we're heading for a European Model of hunting.
One thing I have observed and I know it's a small sample of LO/Farmers. Most farmers I know don't hunt much and don't really care about shooting a big buck. If they do hunt it's shotgun only. I also know a lot of guys that own the land and rent the farming. Sure it's an investment but the real reason they own it is to hunt it. I plan on being one of those guys in the next few years. Anyway they get the LO tag and whatever crops the deer eat come out of the renters pocket.
A little story from the past season. A bunch of my LO buddies and I were drinking beer and shooting the bull. One of them told the story about seeing a 180+ buck across the field chasing does. 15 minutes later he passed a 150+ at 15 yards hoping to see the larger one. Never happened and my buddy was kind of regretting passing. Well another of the LO's just said "don't you have 2 buck tags in your pocket?"
I think you missed my point about the effect of LO tags. I was saying that I expect a lot of them go into the if "brown and down" hat for party hunting. Also, my concern about the deer population in the area I do most of my hunting is far from worrying about LARGE RACKS.
As far as the discussion about party hunting. First, it will never go anywhere, just like LO tags. Second, in hard hit areas where party hunting kills the majority of deer reducing antlerless tags will do nothing. The tags will have to be changed from ANY SEX to BUCK ONLY.
