Good thread. I wonder if anyone from the DWR or the Rac ever reads these threads and uses any of the information?
I like several of the ideas. Here's the ones I like, not in any particular order.
I think I like Wholelottabull's idea of going out of state. Seems like my out of state hunts are waaaayyy better than the resident hunts. No matter what state it is, they are better. Why????
Cut tag #s. Now!
Raise tag fees. Double.
Micro manage the entire state. As stated the units are already broken up for elk or other species. At least break the deer up into those sub units.
Make deer points deer points. You draw any buck deer tag, you burn your points, end of story.
Control the predators. Let the boys use whatever means needed to take care of the coyotes. (I've seen 3 different deer being attacked by coyotes in the last 14 months)
To recruit young hunters, I think big bucks do it better than puny ones. To illustrate my point; I grew up on the Paunsaugunt during the 70's & 80's. It was closed from 78-85 if I remember correctly. We didn't get to hunt it, and we complained for the first couple of years because we couldn't find any deer on the other side of the road. But once the huge bucks started showing up, we went looking for deer every night with our family. We spent way more days out in the hills just looking at all the monsters. Everyone did it. Even guys that didn't care that much about deer went to see them. We picked up big sheds, and many people came to photograph them and see the deer. Lots of us in my age group have became, guides, photographers, taxidermists, biologists, game wardens, and other areas of wildlife related work.
Now take the deer herd today, and go to the high school and there won't be a single kid going out in wildlife anything. Nobody goes out to look at the deer but us old timers that got hooked back when the deer were everywhere. The kids barely care about hunting. I don't care what you say, a kid will be more hooked on hunting if they kill a big buck than if they hunt hard and see hundreds of orange covered people everywhere, and either don't kill a deer, or kill a year old forky.
I believe we are mismanaging a valuable resource and barely utilizing a small portion of it to benefit us as hunters. We need to think about the deer and the deer herd first. Grow the herd, and the rest will take care of it's self. I know everyone can't kill a big buck, and some don't want to kill a big buck, but most will admit that they'd rather hunt and see big deer.
Last but not least if you want a family affair, take everyone along when someone draws a tag. Everyone in the family doesn't have a tag to enjoy a family hunt.
Deerbedead