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Bravo25, it's mostly emotion. My opinion, but even the wildlife biologists of the Parks & Wildlife Commission are a bit too conservative on this. Some central Texas areas, there oughta be a bounty on does.
However, a lot of that area has been broken up from fairly large ranches to "ranchettes". The new people tend to want to watch deer, not shoot them. Since they know nothing of the population dynamics, nor of carrying capacity of the land, they assume that quantity is just as good as quality--and they don't know much about quality deer, either.
There was at time, back maybe forty years ago, when whitetail deer in central Texas would have a really good buck dressing out in the 125- to 150-pound range. By the late 1970s/early 1980s, figure down to 100 pounds, if you're lucky. I've seen 14-inch spread ten-pointers that wouldn't dress out at 75 pounds.
Back in the late '60s at my old family ranch outside of Austin (now covered by houses and shopping centers), I did a serious herd-reduction program. I took about five times as many does off the place as the law allowed, and killed off every mature spike and "scraggle-horn" buck I saw. I did this for about three years. By the end of that time, average body weight was up by around 30%, and I was getting decent racks.
Art
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