I don't hunt now because of age and health, and when I did, I never shot a buck. Mostly it was because the Cornell Hunting Preserve required their extra heavily regulated hunters to qualify for taking a buck by taking two doe first. But that never bothered me, because I was never interested in trophies; it was the meat I was after. The only use I had for antlers was for rattling, and I got all I wanted from picking up sheds.
Since then, off the Cornell Preserve, I've shot some big doe, and some smaller, and my meat preference was for smaller; the meat is better. The last doe I shot was escorting two yearlings, and dressed out as the largest deer of 14 hanging in the barn after opening weekend. The way our family hunt group worked, we cut meat together, and shared the meat out equally, and a fair share of folks were eating on my doe.
This pleases me greatly.
Yes, I passed up shots; but that was mainly because the deer were moving erratically, the terrain is heavily wooded with a fair amount of vertical, and I couldn't be certain of a humane kill. Besides, long shots, 150yd and up, are rare to practically non-existent in the Central NY terrain.
Central New York is rotten with Whitetails, and large ones, too (or was before I left in late Spring 2016), and prolific hunting was still unable to prevent a lot of Winter kills. To me that means that Winter was a significant genetic moderator (and should be).
Predators should be, too.
There is a significant Coyote presence, they get very big in the cold climate just like the deer (survival in Upstate NY Winters requires that the animals have greater mass), and their numbers are also expanded by a relatively new Red Wolf population spreading down from Quebec.
If the predators are there, then there's a reliable food supply, and that definitely includes the surplus deer.
I welcome the predators and have flatly refused to kill them myself; others are free to do so if they wish; but I honestly believe that the deer overpopulation directly reflects historic predator eradication. I believe that knocked natural selection out of the picture and placed an insoluble necessity on hunting as a population control on deer.
So I worry less about hunters as a genetic selector, and root for the coyote and wolf expansion that nature itself is prompting.
I also realize that is tough on livestock and pets, and may jeopardize small humans, and I don't have a valid answer to such questions.
Greg
