Culling undesirable bucks from your herd is serious business, and there is much misinformation in the marketplace about how to do it. Here is some sound advice from an expert who has been managing his small farm in the Midwest for many years.
By Don Higgins
The author believes you should never cull yearling bucks or 2 1/2-year-olds. Experience has taught him that the time to cull undesirable bucks from the herd is when they reach 3 1/2. At this point, you can tell a lot about a buck’s genetic potential, and by removing it at this age, you limit the amount of breeding he will do.
Even though it was late December, it was my first hunt from this particular stand. I always have a number of stands in place for every conceivable wind direction. But for various reasons, I had let this stand sit vacant through the early season and even during the heat of the rut. Nonetheless, I was still confident that I would see some good activity from this stand, even in late season, since it’s located near a well-used bedding thicket.
It’s one of those locations that always hold promise at any time of the season.
I had barely settled in for the afternoon hunt when the first whitetail appeared from the bedding cover. The glimpse of antlers increased my pulse until I recognized the buck as a 3 1/2-year-old 150-class 4x4 that I’d seen many times. I had videotaped this buck twice before within easy bow range, and once again the camera rolled as the buck passed by just 20 yards away. A few years ago I would have been glad to tag such a buck. But I had since raised the bar, and now I was looking for an older and hopefully bigger buck.
As I waited for the remaining daylight hours to give way to darkness, I was treated to the sight of three more bucks. The best of the bunch was a 2 1/2-year-old pushing 130 inches.
He was following a small band of does and fawns making their way to feed in a cornfield a short distance away.
A NECESSARY KILL
As the sun began to set, I saw another antlered deer making his way toward my position.
I recognized him as a buck I desperately wanted to shoot. His course of travel soon brought him within range of my stand, where the whisper of my Mathews bow sent him on a death run into the heavy cover. I knew the shot was a little high, and with overnight temperatures expected in the 20s, I elected to give him plenty of time. I made plans to return in the morning.
At daylight I was back at the scene with friend and cameraman Kevin Boyer to claim my prize. The search was short, and soon I was fixing my tag on the fallen buck. By now you are probably thinking that I had a mature buck down and would soon be visiting the taxidermist. After all, I had passed up a 150-class buck just before shooting this deer. But the buck I had just shot was a 3 1/2-year-old that field dressed 218 pounds, and he was far from being what most of us would call a “trophy.” While he sported a decent 4-point antler on his left side, his right antler was nothing more than a 17-inch spike. I had watched this buck on our farm for the past two seasons, and he had always carried that spike antler on his right side.
I had hoped that another hunter would kill him, but that didn’t happen. So with two buck tags still in my pocket and no venison in my freezer this late in the season, I decided to do some instant management of my own. Besides, I knew this buck would be 4 1/2 years old next season and therefore much harder to kill. But I had other sound management reasons for wanting to remove this buck from the herd.
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