Thread: do you shoot hinds???

Originally Posted by Tahr

Something that always makes me smile is people shooting what they thinkare poor quality stags and say they have taken it out of te "gene pool". What a hoot - you would need to shoot a zillion to make any difference. And mostly I suspect they are young animals.

Far better to shoot hinds so that there is competition amongst the stags so the biggest, bravest and fittest stags get to serve the hinds while the inferior ones sulk in the corner. I sulked a lot like that when I was a teenager.

I shoot about 50 deer a year. I try to shoot hinds and does if they present themselves but am guilty of shooting stags for meat. I don't (mostly) shoot stags with obvious potential. But I'm an imperfect person, and really do like killing shit so make the odd indiscretion

Completely agree especially the part about being imperfect (I mean we all are not saying you are the only imperfect one hahahha) but trying is all we can do really.

If there's 10 hinds to one stag every shitter is going to get to breed.

As for shitters culled for the gene pool I agree a lot are young stags (my biggest cringe is scrubby 12) and thats why I dont cull unless its super obvious like deformitys or they are clearly mature shitters. The other one is culling for not having bezs which down south wouldnt leave you many deer in many places.

However I do think selective harvest of stags can have an effect (your not going to change the entire potential of the herd but you can improve it somewhat) but more so in that shooting young potential rippers before they reach maturity where they can be the dominant stag means those genes dont continue. I think realistically the best chance for making a difference is leaving stags unless old or obvious culls and killing hinds so the stags have to fight it out for females. Then maybe one day when there enough 6 plus year old stags we can actually make reasonable judgement calls on stags as by that age potential is alot more obvious.