Depending on were in fl you are can make a massive difference. I hunt river edges and i can say a 4-5-6-7 year old deer dont have record antlers.
Hell the 7 year old was small he was a 10 but not even close to 100 score.
So i have to agree its Florida. If you like more prof look at cattle. Florida is one of the oldest and biggest cattle states. Florida terrain created a subspecies of cattle called, Florida scrub cattle. The environment filtered out large shoulder, hips, and horns. So i say it does the same to deer.
I guess I should rephrase that,Florida will not consistently produce b/c or p/y bucks. I know for a fact we can produce them,just the majority of our deer will not even reach the Fl registery. Also you may want to take a look at the buck I killed last year with my bow,an even more ancient form of hunting than a modern flintlock.
TOUCHÉ.... :toast
And a fine buck it was.
Now, if only we could convince others to try such obsolete methods.....
My dad killed a 6 pt back on 83' that would have made the Fl registery if it had brow times. Is give anything to hunt with him again.
nope not a trophy hunter at all, as a matter of fact lately now pretty much just a target shooter/reloader and haven't hunted deer since before I moved here in 2003. I just feel strongly that FL can and should be a hunters paradise with a little help and I don't really know why but it kind of burns me to see big money going to georgia that could be put to good use here. I think where I came from may have been more diverse.we did have shorter seasons and lower bag limits and doe harvests were encouraged. relatively flat sandy soil with salt water all around Long Island is overrun with huge racked deer, smaller in body size than the catskill or adirondack mtn's deer, to some bruisers of the farmland along the upper Hudson river and finger lakes regions, to the freeze your buns off areas near the Canadian border. anyone ever stationed at Fort Drum in winter can attest to that. we had lots of restrictions in certain areas and none in others. one example of 2 areas I hunted not far apart both with very similar terrain and agricultural usage. Greene county was a more open area with no size or gun use limit, and was over run with does and the bucks you did see were pretty much all small basket racks, while in Chenengo county which was shotgun only and no sunday hunting had a ratio that to me seemed higher in bucks and they had huge racks. to this day I've never seen an area so covered with rubs and scrapes. closer to home now a property I have hunted (in cooler weather) in Bksvl has it all woods,open grassy fields,tons of oaks/acorns, various berry's,thick swamps and palmetto's, year round water, yet deer are pretty scarce plenty of yotes,rabbits and turkey. tons of owls,hawks,osprey even a pair of bald eagles, otter,gator snakes, 1 resident hog that has eaten a couple thousand pounds of my corn (I put out 6-800 lbs a year for 3 years and only a few pics of does and a couple small bucks, why no more/bigger deer I have no idea,+ I promissede not to shoot any if seen. so NO I AM NOT A QDM/TROPHY FREAK, just think theres always room for improvement.
