Cull buck definition

What is your definition of a cull buck?

I'm not a trophy hunter, per se, but I will take a deer with a nice rack and even spend the money for a shoulder mount, if there is some sentiment behind it. I'm mostly doing it because we enjoy venison here.

So, I'm hunting and my Dad is in the blind with me. A nice, but young, 8pt buck comes out behind some does. Dad advises not to shoot it because of its age. I weren't too happy about that, but I decided to let it walk vs tripping over his lips the rest of the evening.

My next outing, I was hunting alone. Besides the few does that visited the area, were a couple of button heads, a spike, and two cowhorns. I didn't shoot anything.

I was telling my Dad about one of the cowhorns because the main beams were about 12" long and it had to have been about a 10 to 12" spread. If it had any brow tines, I didn't see them. Dad's remark was that I should have shot him, you know, to remove him from the gene pool. I guess Dad considered him a cull buck.

If you're into any kind of deer management on your land or lease, what makes a buck a cull buck?

TL;DR How do you decide which buck to shoot if you're trying to "manage" your herd?

Younger deer give them time to show you what they have.

An older cow horn or an older deer with a inferior jacked up rack. Shoot em, Elizabeth.

but in reality, unless you have a large track of land or are in a group of land owners of like mind, managing antlers is a tough job.

You let it walk and your neighbor drops it.

Tailhunter said:

Younger deer give them time to show you what they have.

An older cow horn or an older deer with a inferior jacked up rack. Shoot em, Elizabeth.

but in reality, unless you have a large track of land or are in a group of land owners of like mind, managing antlers is a tough job.

You let it walk and your neighbor drops it.

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I agree.

This guy came through about a week ago. I thought we would most likely cross paths in the next week or two. Nope. A guy leasing the land next to us got him yesterday morning. He was nice enough to offer us the meat.

And speaking of genes, I believe I killed this guy's daddy two years ago. He was only a six point, but had nice mass. He also weighed 200lbs, the heaviest deer I'd ever killed.



Daddy?

Cull buck to me is inferior genetics (rack or lack there of). Ive seen hunting shows that were not in NC and on those shows they were shooting 150 class deer as culls. I think it means different things to different folks. I liked where I was hunting the last 3 yrs I had a place to hunt, if it was a deer or coyote, shoot it. Owner wanted anything that ate vegetation or could eat her dog, dead. I had no problem with that directive.

Simply my opinion.... but I think the entire “deer management” for genetics is BS. Yes I agree if a deer is young and is shaped up nice I will let him move along. As far as deer that have inferior racks... well look at dogs.. if dogs are line bred to tighten certain bloodlines up, the pups are often used later as breeders and not workers/hunters. Typically because the inbreeding jacks them up but they produce good offspring. As dense of a deer population that we have, I’m sure there is a ton of inbreeding but who’s to say that cow horn can’t breed to a doe from an outside herd and produce monsters..... I see too many people “manage” their property but each year claim they have to Cull more...if you haven’t culled them in (20) years then I don’t think it’s gonna happen.... just my thought.. the only way to truly manage would be to know what kind of offspring one is producing....
so I just shoot everything that looks to be of age.

Culling bucks for genetics doesn’t work.

https://www.qdma.com/qdm-works-culling-doesnt/

I only have about a section of land with which to play. That is not really enough to have an effective management plan since the deer move around on and off the property a lot, since other hunters frequently run dogs through the area, and since there are a few scumbags around who are not happy unless they are poaching on posted land. I have not been able to hunt much in the last two years and have not kept good tabs on the deer on the property except through the reports of a friend who hunts it fairly frequently. There are lots of does and a good number of pleasingly large bucks this year. He has taken one very pretty 8 point this year but has passed on several others because they were not as big as several he has seen on trail cameras. They can not get bigger if they are dead, and some of them might survive the season. You never know. My guests are allowed to shoot any deer they want. I do not encourage guests to take smaller bucks that some may consider to be culls because the smaller deer give more bucks for the poaching maggots and for the dog hunters to kill. The big bucks did not get big by being stupid.

I generally hunt does because they taste better. I have more antlers in the barn than I can hang on the walls. It would not bother me if I never killed another large buck. I like to see them and like to know they are around so that one of my guests may get a chance at a nice buck.

I would probably do things a little differently if I had a huge tract of land that I could control effectively. I would most likely try to get about a 50/50 buck/doe ratio and would refrain from shooting bucks that showed great promise for future antler growth.

I shoot primarily for meat, however, if one steps out that is larger than what is currently mounted on the wall, he'll be right up there too.

Just came back from hunting 3 days at a local wildlife 'refuge' (refuge means migratory waterfowl to the FedGov) and they have a mandate basically to kill everything that walks. Every year, nice deer (140+ 8,9,10s over 170lbs) come off that 9000 acres despite the rule being if it's brown it's down. Keys to that kind of deer herd are A. agricultural land intermixed with mature hardwoods B. plenty of thicket and creek bottom and C. having a season that opens earlier than the surrounding county.

Heard a guy complaining that he's been hunting there 28 years and everything used to go over 150lbs. Turns out their scales are 20lb light, verified by my 15 year old son hanging on the scale and weighing 20lbs less than he did at his recent physical exam.

Dumb. Just dumb. There's no management involved other than forestry, agriculture, and managing yourself.

JakeH said:

Culling bucks for genetics doesn’t work.

https://www.qdma.com/qdm-works-culling-doesnt/

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I think it was very unwise to cull the yearling bucks. They even said so in the summary. It would be interesting to see another study along the same lines with a different set of cull requirements that left the yearlings alone.

That study also hints at the importance of killing the does that you want to kill early in the season. It would decrease the number of does that an individual buck must service as well as reducing the population a bit so the stress of wintertime would not be as great on the survivors.

They also mentioned the problem of not being able to put any type of quality value on does so the inferior does can be recognized and culled. Even the size of the antlers in the bucks was not shown to be an accurate measure of quality, whatever quality is.

Culling would probably work if there were good ways to identify high quality in bucks and does in the wild. There do not, however, seem to be any that actually work.

Charlie said:

I think it was very unwise to cull the yearling bucks. They even said so in the summary. It would be interesting to see another study along the same lines with a different set of cull requirements that left the yearlings alone.

That study also hints at the importance of killing the does that you want to kill early in the season. It would decrease the number of does that an individual buck must service as well as reducing the population a bit so the stress of wintertime would not be as great on the survivors.

They also mentioned the problem of not being able to put any type of quality value on does so the inferior does can be recognized and culled. Even the size of the antlers in the bucks was not shown to be an accurate measure of quality, whatever quality is.

Culling would probably work if there were good ways to identify high quality in bucks and does in the wild. There do not, however, seem to be any that actually work.

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The “moderate” culling followed the guidelines you’re talking about in the first paragraph:

Moderate (18,000 acres): 3½- to 4½-year-olds with less than 9 points and all bucks 5½ or older scoring less than 145 gross Boone & Crockett inches were culled (the same criteria as the intensive treatment except no yearlings or 2½-year-olds were culled in this area).

The results here were not any different than the control group.

JakeH said:

The “moderate” culling followed the guidelines you’re talking about in the first paragraph:

Moderate (18,000 acres): 3½- to 4½-year-olds with less than 9 points and all bucks 5½ or older scoring less than 145 gross Boone & Crockett inches were culled (the same criteria as the intensive treatment except no yearlings or 2½-year-olds were culled in this area).

The results here were not any different than the control group.

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Very close to what I suggested except they did not cull the 2.5 year old deer. I wonder whether the population would crash if they did cull the 2.5 deer? Even if it did not crash, would any improvement occur? No telling. Probably not.

I like to cull em outta the gene pool & into my freezer.

Crazy Carl said:

I like to cull em outta the gene pool & into my freezer.

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I haven’t shot a buck since 2012. We gotta huge bodied saggy bellied 4 pointer behind the house I’m thinking about making burger out of

chuckcraig said:

so I just shoot everything that looks to be of age.

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JakeH said:

The “moderate” culling followed the guidelines you’re talking about in the first paragraph:

Moderate (18,000 acres): 3½- to 4½-year-olds with less than 9 points and all bucks 5½ or older scoring less than 145 gross Boone & Crockett inches were culled (the same criteria as the intensive treatment except no yearlings or 2½-year-olds were culled in this area).

The results here were not any different than the control group.

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Sooooo.. they feel they’re culling by shooting a 4+ year old deer with poor genetics..
I guess since he has poor genetics, we presume he’s been gay for the previous breeding seasons??

I think people get the misconception that "culling" deer means you're attempting to improve genetics. You can't...... what you can do is watch a deer until he's 3.5 to 4.5 yrs old and make a decision on if he's a deer you want to continue to grow. If you're trying to grow big deer and you have a 3.5 yr old 7pt with 18" beams and 2" brow tines maybe it's time to take him out. It frees up food and living space for a buck that shows more potential.

chuckcraig said:

Sooooo.. they feel they’re culling by shooting a 4+ year old deer with poor genetics..
I guess since he has poor genetics, we presume he’s been gay for the previous breeding seasons??

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Did you read the article that I posted or just that snippet? Because if you had you would have noticed that there was an intensive culling, a moderate culling, and a control group.

In the intensive cull group, any yearling under 6 points, 2.5 under 8 points, and 3.5/4.5 under 9 points was culled. Two major takeaways came from this group.

1. The buck population crashed completely from a near 1:1 ratio with does to a 1:6 ratio. Fewer bucks means does being bred later in the year and because next year’s bucks are younger, they’re smaller meaning you’ll end up culling them too.

2. 85-100% of yearlings captured in this area fell into the cull criteria. However, DNA tests proved that many of them had superior genetics and fathers that were not cull deer. This means YOU CAN NOT CULL DEER TO IMPROVE GENETICS.

Maybe you’ve got a deer with an ugly rack. Poor genetics, right? Nope, it’s more likely that he’s been injured in the past by a car, a hunter, or another deer. https://www.qdma.com/spike-one-side-genetics-injury/

At the end of the day, shoot what you want because none of us are the deer police. But if you think you can cull deer to improve the genetics of the herd then you’re gonna be going up against a mountain of scientific evidence stating otherwise.

Any male with soyface?