The Status of Shamanic QDM

At our camp, we have no particular standards. This is the first year we will all be adults– my youngest turned 16. I think it is rather goofy to have kids passing on less than ideal deer unless they choose to do so.

I know there is a lot of stuff out there about QDM and such, and I am not saying it is complete hokum, but there needs to be some sense of proportion. It used to be that I really thought I was doing the right thing by trying to kill doe and eschewing smaller bucks. However, in the 13 seasons I have been on the plot, my ideas have changed. It may be heresy to y’all, but hear me out.

Remember as you read this that I have 200 acres. QDM catechism states you need 300 acres as a minimum. Additionally remember that there may be as many as 3000 hunters that hear my shot on the Opener– that’s about 1 hunter per 4 acres. We have no more than 4 hunters on 200 acres.

1) To me, the secret to big bucks on my size plot is making the doe happy. I do a lot of habitat improvement, and I try to give my resident doe a place to raise their fawns in peace. Then I turn around and use them for bait come fall.
2) The big buck I spy today may be in another county by next weekend. Big bucks roam on a range much larger than my 200 acres. My plot is really too small to successfully manage antlers without putting up a high fence.
3) Taking doe is fine, but taking the matriarch of a herd is detrimental. They are the ones that make the decisions on where to go and what to eat. I don’t want to exterminate them or honk them off. After I have hunted my 1 buck (all KY allows) I go hunting for 1-2 doe. I try my best to take the younger females. If I screw up and take a button I don’t worry too much. They still taste good.
4) I never think about thinning or culling or that sort of thing. We are in a zone that is very liberal; we can take as many antlerless deer as we want, but only 1 buck. There is going to be no more than 15 deer on the property at any given time. 1 may be mature buck. It matters not a whit what I choose to shoot this year. Next year, the deer will replace themselves from the surplus that surrounds me, and I have no control over what comes in.

My personal goal was always to hold out for a buck that is bigger than any I’ve previously shot. Then in 2007, I shot a real monarch, and realized it might be the biggest one I ever shoot. Since then I have had to revise my standards:
1) I still try to shoot one bigger than what I killed the previous year.
2) If I burn my buck tag on a wounded deer (2005) I count that as a reset. Ditto if I eat tag soup (2012) or only take doe (2010).

As to the rest of our camp, [i]Der Bauernhof am Loch im Ende des Stumpfes[/i]:

Moose? He has never passed on a spike. He says he would like to take bigger, but somehow the gun goes off and . . .
Angus? Angus is the uber-sportsman. He shot his first doe in 2009 and then passed on numerous deer until he got a nice buck. He is willing to go the whole season, waiting for the right set of antlers.
SuperCore? The man is a machine. He will drop two in one outing, but age is creeping up on him and the memory of cleaning two deer in a day is making him think twice.

One last thing: I really had to scratch my head back in 2012. I let a nice 10 pointer pass on the Muzzleloader Opener in October, and then ended up with tag soup in rifle season. I realized in retrospect that the reason I passed was that I enjoy the whole Deer Camp scene in November and I did not want to screw it up burning my buck tag. I’ve passed on nice bucks before, but this was a wake-up.

As I commented later:
[quote]
Still it was funny how passing on the one last year kind of forced my hand this year. The year before that, I had a buck-of-a-lifetime come through just at the edge of my range, and I had held fire, because I did not want to risk anything but a good shot on such a fine animal. You string enough of those passes on your belt, and you start getting into Buck Fever territory. That is another subtlety of the sport they don’t teach you. You can only be picky for so long before you and the rest of camp stop thinking of you as the ultimate sportsman and start thinking of you as Nervous Nelson.[/quote]

From: And So It Ends Again

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