APR 2013?

[Wanderer]

That channel 5 story was nothing more than a hit on hunters and I think/hope everyone realizes that.

Basically it was a non-story that needed a spin to make it airable. Lame.

[nonteepical]

one of the weakest reports on local t.v in years, on any subject. Lets hear the weak arguments on this one.

http://www.qdma.com/articles/aprs-why-do-so-many-michigan-hunters-like-them

[TruthWalleyes]

OK, that article did it...It changed my mind forever...

I'm a MANDATED APR supporter. More horns for me please.

It's all aboot the horns man. Can't wait to get them horns on my wall this year.

Quit shooting the yearlings. I want bigger horns.

[96trigger]

Geez Truth, your like Darth Vader when he turned away from the dark side....

[Getanet]

So Truth, didjya buy a 1-year or Lifetime membership to the QDMA?

[TruthWalleyes]

Got my free sticker in the mail

[flipper]

Did you get your free centerfold of a big rack?

[Bear55]

You'd think the brown down crew would appreciate us mature buck hunters a little more, we do pass up a pile of targets for you guys each fall. Has to make filling the freezer that much easier for you.

[Scott K]

Kinda goes both ways to doesnt it? Just imagine how hard it would be to find a big buck, if 500,000 hunters in the woods are all looking for trophy bucks. Not only that, but how hard it owuld be to get land to hunt the prime big buck areas.

[flipper]

You'd think the brown down crew would appreciate us mature buck hunters a little more, we do pass up a pile of targets for you guys each fall. Has to make filling the freezer that much easier for you.

Is that me you are talking to? I haven't shot a buck mature or imature for over ten years and have been passing on a lot of does too so I guess I'm not in the brown its down camp! You guys might want to realize that just because someone understands what a pile of carp APR is that doesn't mean they are meat hogs.

[Jameson]

Kinda goes both ways to doesnt it? Just imagine how hard it would be to find a big buck, if 500,000 hunters in the woods are all looking for trophy bucks. Not only that, but how hard it owuld be to get land to hunt the prime big buck areas.

Silly.

Right now we have very few prime big buck areas and you think creating more of them will make it harder to find one to hunt. Right now we have 500,000 hunters and 499,000 of them won't pass up a good shot on a trophy buck now, and you think putting more trophy bucks in the woods will make it harder to find one.

[Jameson]

one of the weakest reports on local t.v in years, on any subject. Lets hear the weak arguments on this one.

http://www.qdma.com/articles/aprs-why-do-so-many-michigan-hunters-like-them

Not a terrible article. A bit biased if you know the Doctor's business who wrote this, but I do respect the guy from reading a bunch of what he has written.

Every time I read "then hunters were surveyed five years later and the support for the reg was higher then ever" I cringe. Ya think maybe the hunters that didn't like the new reg either quit hunting or found someplace else to hunt? Just maybe. I would really like to see one of the later surveys done to the same individual hunters as the first survey.

[Mo Gator]

Kinda goes both ways to doesnt it? Just imagine how hard it would be to find a big buck, if 500,000 hunters in the woods are all looking for trophy bucks. Not only that, but how hard it owuld be to get land to hunt the prime big buck areas.

Sorry, but that makes absolutely no sense at all.

[TruthWalleyes]

"then hunters were surveyed five years later and the support for the reg was higher then ever"

They probably asked questions like "Do you like big deer?"

If you say "Yes" you fall into the APR trap.

Hmmm, kind of like the MN DNR survey.

Man that centerfold looks nice on my wall. Now, i need a big deer head next to it.

[Scott K]

Silly.

Right now we have very few prime big buck areas and you think creating more of them will make it harder to find one to hunt. Right now we have 500,000 hunters and 499,000 of them won't pass up a good shot on a trophy buck now, and you think putting more trophy bucks in the woods will make it harder to find one.

Well if you have 500,000+ hunters in the woods, and the majority of them are willing to shoot a doe, or a spike buck, then you convert them over to 500,000+ head hunters that will only shoot large rack bucks, now the competition for large racks starts tenfold from what it is now. Then you will have trophy hunters from thoughout the country coming here, then you will have pretty much all land leased to the highest bidder. No more cheap deer hunting. Poaching will increase as well. Supply and demand. Right now we have a majority happy to shoot a doe, a forkhorn, or small basket racks, and you want to make it mandatory to shoot large racked deer.

[Bear55]

Is that me you are talking to? I haven't shot a buck mature or imature for over ten years and have been passing on a lot of does too so I guess I'm not in the brown its down camp! You guys might want to realize that just because someone understands what a pile of carp APR is that doesn't mean they are meat hogs.

No flip not targeting you just kind of posting in general and having a little fun. Not an APR fan either, plenty of us big buck hunters don't care for it. Although I probably wouldn't make a big deal about it either if an area I hunted went APR.

[Bear55]

Well if you have 500,000+ hunters in the woods, and the majority of them are willing to shoot a doe, or a spike buck, then you convert them over to 500,000+ head hunters that will only shoot large rack bucks, now the competition for large racks starts tenfold from what it is now. Then you will have trophy hunters from thoughout the country coming here, then you will have pretty much all land leased to the highest bidder. No more cheap deer hunting. Poaching will increase as well. Supply and demand. Right now we have a majority happy to shoot a doe, a forkhorn, or small basket racks, and you want to make it mandatory to shoot large racked deer.

This would be great! Kind of like Iowa but with more pressure. Lots of mature bucks running around.

Really I'm not competing with other hunters but the deer themselves. Other hunters come into play but if 500K hunters can't fill their tags shooting everything they are surely not going to shoot all the mature bucks.

[Musky Buck]

What'strange is we've been practicing go grow which is apr in sense, nothing less than an 8 and there's about 20 of us some years not all the guys show up but why haven't we had any mistakes in the 25 years we've been doing this ? In no way am I implying we're the best hunting party in the state, we have from ages 80 down to 25 or so with a few newcomers we're training in, they get solid help because they can't hunt alone until they're 15 and by then they understand. First few years you bet they can harvest what they want but generally they want to be like us older goats. They learn it's a challenge you just don't pile up a deer because it isn't a fawn. If it's too dark or whatever you just put that safety on. I can only imagine how happy the neighboring land owners are that they can load the trailer with yearling bucks year after year hence the reason you hear about go grow, APR's, let him walk, and other slogans etc. To some a yearling buck at 125 is big, to us it's not, it's a future buck that needs to survive a winter or 3. Where we hunt deer in Ottertail county it would be absolutely boring to go out and hammer a yearling buck at first light opening day year after year, we all tend to see some of them likely because we aren't piling up fawns either the year before they get a rack. Some go away happy each year some longing for the next year, now with the deerless ones muzzleloading there's some sort of a chance to still connect, either way we get to enjoy a lot of days in the field or stand. Many of us could use venison as we're not driving escalades into deercamp, not at all. Our group enjoys the challenge and the 0 guarantee, people say a buck behind every tree there already is, just 75% of them are yearlings. I think if I didn't like apr I'd definitely want to bow,gunand muzzy it to increase my chances.

[PurpleFloyd]

Kinda goes both ways to doesnt it? Just imagine how hard it would be to find a big buck, if 500,000 hunters in the woods are all looking for trophy bucks. Not only that, but how hard it owuld be to get land to hunt the prime big buck areas.

Sorta like fishing. Check out the number of boats at a particular lake when the bite is slow and then start telling the guys at the bar, bait shop and on the forums that the big walleyes are biting and see how the fishing pressure increases. Any time there are big deer around the same thing happens. Word gets out and suddenly there is a convoy of trucks circling the section.

[Wanderer]

No flip not targeting you just kind of posting in general and having a little fun. Not an APR fan either, plenty of us big buck hunters don't care for it. Although I probably wouldn't make a big deal about it either if an area I hunted went APR.

I'm really in the same camp about APR even though I've been posting on the APR side (really posting against some of the anti-APR comments more than anything).

When APR was first announced for SE MN, I had mixed feelings. Yes, I wanted to see the bucks get chance to mature instead of having to run the gauntlet every year and hardly ever see mid sized 8 pointers like I've been seeing lately but I also knew the money would likely follow. The money reason was the only reason I've said, "If we're going to have APR, make it statewide" to spread out the competition. APR doesn't have to mean 4 or more points on a side EVERYWHERE. It could be 3, or whatever was appropriate for each area.

If they repealed APR in this state completely, I'd still sleep just fine but I'd also know that it would crash the male population of the already reduced deer heard where I currently hunt in Z 3 for some time.

I get anti - anti APR when people just keep puking out that it's all about the HORNS (antlers, by the way ). There's so much more to it than that but its a convenient way to put a negative spin on APR.

[Getanet]

APR doesn't have to mean 4 or more points on a side EVERYWHERE. It could be 3, or whatever was appropriate for each area."

There's so much more to it than that but its a convenient way to put a negative spin on APR.

I propose a statewide APR of "at least one antler at least 3 inches long."

There's not really much more too APR than that. I'll grant you there is much more to QDM, but not APR.

[Jameson]

...Well if you have 500,000+ hunters in the woods, and the majority of them are willing to shoot a doe, or a spike buck, then you convert them over to 500,000+ head hunters that will only shoot large rack bucks, now the competition for large racks starts tenfold from what it is now. Then you will have trophy hunters from thoughout the country coming here, then you will have pretty much all land leased to the highest bidder. No more cheap deer hunting. Poaching will increase as well. Supply and demand. Right now we have a majority happy to shoot a doe, a forkhorn, or small basket racks, and you want to make it mandatory to shoot large racked deer.

When one of those doe hunters shoots a doe, it might take out a big racked buck three years later. When one of those spike hunters shoots a spike, it might take out a big racked buck two years later. Those hunters are shooting the predecessors of large racked deer now. The biggest change would be that there would be more large racked deer. The pressure on the herd, in your example - where you kept the numbers of hunters consistent, would be the same. So, sure maybe the number of hunters targeting large racked deer would increase, but so would the number of targets. Pressure thus remains the same.

Then you switch it up and say we are adding trophy hunters from around the country, and that will cause all the land to be leased to folks with deep pockets. So? We live in a Capitalist society if you haven't noticed. People here like to make money. Are you against that? I don't think it will happen here anyways...

It sort of the Minnesota passive aggressive thing here isn't it? You think leasing land is bad, don't want to outright ban it, so you just create a scenario where no one will want to do it. How Minnesotan of you!!!

If poaching increases, so what? Are you saying that puts hunters in a bad light?

So you are saying we could have the best hunting in the country, but you don't want it because you don't want people making money from owning land. ok, whatever. And if we wouldn't have the best hunting in the country then why would everyone flock here? If we have big deer and someplace warmer then us has big deer, then most folks are going to choose the warmer hunt. And we are normally colder then most places.

Also, I don't want to make it mandatory to shoot large racked deer. Besides being anti-APR I am also anti-forcingpeopletohunt. About the only mandatory got to shoot a deer hunting rule that I can think of that I support is the Earn a buck rule. It wasn't too long ago I was getting chastised here for suggesting a late doe hunt in areas with too many deer by the folks that couldn't handle the thought of shooting a buck without it's antlers.

[Wanderer]

There's not really much more too APR than that. I'll grant you there is much more to QDM, but not APR.

I must have missed your better proposal than APR to reach some sort of QDM that the general public can follow...

...and 'round and 'round we go...

[Scott K]

I guess I can be happy, and satisfied, and consider my hunt good, even without a headress to hang on the wall.

[Getanet]

I must have missed your better proposal than APR to reach some sort of QDM that the general public can follow...

I don’t have a better proposal because I don’t think it's necessary. I fall in the camp that prefers to let the individual choose what is and isn’t acceptable to shoot.