Interesting Article: Biologic and Other reasons for Antler Restriction in NY

[nyslowhand]

Not totally true, need the habitat also.

Older-yes, but not necessarily bigger!

[Larry]

I just read the report and I don’t think there is anything new in it. The DEC did fetal studies back in the 60’s and 70’s that establish that most of the breeding took place around mid Nov... Using northern NY as an example for how long the rut in NY ran; probably isn’t good example. Think about in some parts of northern NY the deer densities are less than 1 deer per sq mile so wouldn’t you think it would take longer for most doe’s to be bread. Wouldn’t killing more of the older bucks give younger bucks a greater opportunity to breed not less? If you have 10 1.5 year old bucks and 10 2.5 year old and older bucks and you kill 6 of the older deer and 1 of the younger deer would that give the younger buck a better chance to breed.  :

[bpb]

Check out this article on the Hudson Valley QDMA about Biologic and Other reasons for Antler Restrictions in New York. 

http://www.hvqdma.com/biological-needs-for-antler-restriction/

Didn't I beat that article in a bloody pulp several times before! Dang it has more fight than Bruce Wills does. LMAO

Oh yea,   its the food and not the selective lab breeding.

[Larry]

I would like to know how Animal husbandry has anything to do with free ranging deer. When by definition Animal husbandry is the care and breeding of Domesticated livestock. Here are some of the techniques used: breeders, herd health specialists, feeders, and milkers to help care for the animals. Techniques such as artificial insemination and embryo transfer are frequently used, not only as methods to guarantee that females are bred, but also to help improve herd genetics. This may be done by transplanting embryos from stud-quality females into flock-quality surrogate mothers - freeing up the stud-quality mother to be reimpregnated. This practice vastly increases the number of offspring which may be produced by a small selection of stud-quality parent animals. This in turn improves the ability of the animals to convert feed to meat, milk, or fiber more efficiently, and improve the quality of the final product.

I would think it would be extremely difficult to employ any of these techniques on free ranging deer.