Hello All!
I was directed here as it seems someone likes to toss my name around. Funny how every time the "one buck rule" is brought up I am the sole person responsible! Now that is alot of power with our department of Natural Resources. There was support from sportsmen and women to improve the age and sex ratio that is why we have a one buck rule today. After the first five years the support grew from 56% to 72%, now the question is how did just one sportsman(me) garner all those Hoosier deer hunters?
As far as our previous deer biologist who FireHawk claims to have talked to.......... He stated in public that Indiana would never get a annual harvest of male antlered deer below 56% of 1 1/2 year old bucks. Uh, Jim (deer biologist) it is now stable at 40%!!!! I have nothing against our previous deer biologist other than he was a traditional deer biologist. If it was brown and had a white tail it was a good deer. The deer hunters of Indiana wanted more older age deer and now we have them.
To answer the original post. There is nothing wrong with what you are seeing, it takes some young bucks to survive to get to older age class. The older age deer are there, what happens as it does some years is the gun season opened in the beginning of the breeding phase. Many of the older age bucks are with does. Next weekend we will slay those big bucks as they will again be looking for love. Last week warm weather all but shut down daylight movement. You need to realize that older deer have learned the mating game, they set back let the youngsters chase. They are conserving energy, when the time comes they walk in and take control.
Again I'm not a deer biologist, but managing deer is easy, managing deer hunters is usually the problem.
Wow now that's one hell of a first post!