150 class Booner?

quote:

Originally posted by ted thorn:
150 class Booner?

quote:

Originally posted by ted thorn:
150 class Booner?

I shot one of those with my Winchester Model 70 Holland and Holland Royal.

Take my word for it, I have heard deer referred to as Booners.

quote:

Originally posted by Crazyhorseconsulting:
Take my word for it, I have heard deer referred to as Booners.

"Booners" are a nickname for Boone and Crockett class deer.

There's no such thing as a 150" "Booner" as the B&C minimum is 170".

Crazyhorse, they are amused, I believe, because the B&C minimum is 160 for book entry and 170 for awards, if I recall properly, not to the term "Booner". But I could be mistaken. A 150" deer is never a Booner.

I understand what everyone is laughing about, but if everyone will reel their humor in for just a second, when practically ANY deer hunter refers to the size of a deer, they are uing the B&C scoring terminology.

All of the places offering hunts for white tail deer, base their prices on B&C scores.

My reference to a 150 Booner had nothing to do with making the rercord books, but to the way m,any hunters describe ther size of the deer they have killed, such as a peron stating that they killed a 140 class B&C buck.

They are not claiming it is a record book animal, they are just explaining the size of the animal, using a widely accepted scoring method.

Glad you straitened me out

For years when I hear of a hunter tell a story of a "Booner" I thought they were describing a 170 class buck.....

Because that's what they mean....the lingo "Booner" is a record class animal description

Hey!!! Glad to get a laugh....thanks Craze

Next weekend marks the start of the "Alternative methods"season here in Missouri.....I will try to put a Booner in front of my wife's Knight muzel loader

Glad you enjoyed it. That is another of those arguements I have seen fought out on various forums, the use of the B&C scoring method or terminology for bucks that are no where close to being registered as a trophy under B&C rules.

The system however is widely accepted in the world of deer hunting as the standard for decribing the size of a buck someone shot.

quote:

Originally posted by larrys:
Crazyhorse, they are amused, I believe, because the B&C minimum is 160 for book entry and 170 for awards, if I recall properly, not to the term "Booner". But I could be mistaken. A 150" deer is never a Booner.

Exactly.......150 and Booner don't belong in the same sentence.

I agree, they don't belong in the same sentence, but then neither does Jumbo Shrimp or Military Intelligence. There is no law, federal/state or local that controls what some folks will use to decribe a nice buck.

What makes a "nice" buck or doe? I like a big antlered buck just like anyone else. Now that is out of the way I can say it in two words. Freezer space! Big bodied healthy deer. A well managed herd will be bigger in body size and healthier than a poorly managed one. You will get some bigger racks as well if the genetics as well as food source is there. This year even the yearlings were packed with fat. A few were even marbled all the way through. The stomachs were all full of corn and beans. So grain fed more or less but not by design, just a lot of food from the fields. Basically to get the big racks you guys are talking about you need multiple things. Good genetics, selective take, good feed, proper minerals, amount of water, and even weather play a part. To single out one thing to manage while ignoring the others is in my mind futile at best. The only management we do is to try and keep the buck to doe ratio even and put out a few mineral blocks. The farms provide good cover and food without management. Weather, at least as far as I know is still not under our ability to control. The only thing we can control otherwise is to control what and how many we shoot. Even that is a crap shoot because the amish on one side pretty much kill anything that walks. Same is true for a farmer on another side. Don't think the deer are just local either. One thing the collar and tag programs have shown is deer moving 50 to 60 miles. Not quite so black and white, especially in light of the things we can not control.

No 1.5 year old buck, spike or not, has any guarantee of being a 150/160/170 class deer at maturity. And no one ever said ALL spikes will be trophy size bucks at maturity.

Any one who cannot tell a 1.5 year old spike from a 2.5/3.5/4.5 year old spike has no business using the term deer manager, and in fact should just go fishing....

Wonder how many bags of "antler grow" ol' #26 was fed out in the wild next to the only watering hole? Just curious, does the high fence keep deer "in" or "out"?

quote:

Originally posted by DTala:
No 1.5 year old buck, spike or not, has any guarantee of being

ANYTHING

Nobody knows if the buck will even be alive the next week if it is truly a free ranging wild deer. It could be killed by a car, predator, lightning strike, drowning, disease etc... It is called nature and the only thing for certain is that every deer that has ever lived and that ever will live will be killed by something.

The last four responses, for the most part, are some of the best made on this issue and describe how things work in the "REAL" world of deer hunting/management.

The only thing I take issue with is that local conditions have to be taken into consideration.

We are into the second year of a drought in most of Texas, and it i more important in my opinion, to let 1.5 to 2.5 fork horns walk then let a half dozen 1.5 spikes walk. The only way that branch antlered buck is going to achieve his full genetic potential is to get enough nutrition.

Too many places here in Texas, have created an artificially high deer population thru supplemental year round feeding programs.

In the case of the area where the properties are that I work on, with the end of season approaching, many of the hunters with leases in the area will stop feeding. When that happens, the deer/feral hog/turkeys etc. will move to properties where feeding is still taking place. Also, evern though quite a bit of the winter wheat has been planted and has sprouted, due to the lack of moisture it is not doing very good and between the various wildlife speices feeding on it and the cattle that have been placed on those fields, if we don't get rain and soon, that food source is going to be gone. During August and September, I was putting out 600 to 800 pounds of protien in one feeder on a 320 acre place, every 12 to 14 days.

I just believe when nature is throwing curve balls, it is better management practice to take out the questionable animals, spikes of any age and excess does, so that the visibly better animals will have a better chance of making it thru the rough patch.

None of us will ever agree 100% on what should be shot/how many should be shot/what the sex ratio should be in any area and whether or not spikes will all grow up to be trophy bucks or how many spikes occur in a free ranging herd.

I can understand why one would question the "study."

I don't understand how in a controlled (high fenced- which for this "study" would be ideal) environment in which the sample size diminished from 346 to 56 ie a factor of 6 how anyone can make a reasonable concluson based upon only looking at 16% of the original sample size. Sure, great for a sixth grade science project, but not worthy to affirm a hypothesis. So you make a conclusion by looking at only one out of the original six deer- laughable...........ok......

What happened to the other 5 deer?

Got shot cause they were spikes I guess. Even the first data set, which shrunk by 50% from 346 to 174 (sketchy at best) shows inferior horns. It is only when the sample size diminishes by a factor of 4-6 where the "data" supports the conclusion. Also the numbers of the "less than" category are fewer, which would help the conclusion. Sounds like bullshit to me.

Don't forget data is not all what it seems: I'm waiting for my Nobel prize- I wrote a paper that toilet paper causes cancer as everyone with rectal cancer uses tp.................still waiting.

Problem with spikes is that they usually will grow a set of inferior horns. And they tend to be more "fit" than the run down mature bucks which allows them to breed the does that came in second season. I have yet to see a spike that doesn't start sniffin a doe just before I drop him.

That really is a nice buck, and I'd be proud to have shot him........but the mass to me appears to be somewhat "less than" what is usually seen in a 180-90 deer.

FMC...EXACTLY! The other random entry into the equasion is hunting. Hunting of these deer was allowed, obviously since this very nice deer was killed by a hunter. Hunting alone could skew the results. Here's how. At what age were the deer allowed to be hunted. From the chart, it appears to be all ages, since the population dropped by about 50% the first year. So the question that is unanswered is, did the hunters take the 3.5 year old deer from the >4 point category that supported the biggest racks (potentially the future largest bucks), thus skewing the results? I say probably. Did they shoot the majority of the 10+ point bucks from this category in the first year? We do not know from the results presented, so the 4.5 year data COULD be skewed.

Dit the hunters that shot <3 point category bucks shoot spikes thinking they were helping the genetics? We do not know. So we COULD have the largest deer from one category shot and the smallest from the other, thus artifically creating an average.

quote:

Originally posted by Eland Slayer:

Ok, with my understanding of statistics and t-tests, the P-values are statistically insignificant for all the data of the 4.5 yr and 5.5 yr categories. This is based on the typical default alpha level of 5%. So how is he making conclusions that are statistically "sound" about deer in the 4.5+ year range?
_please note that I really don't give a flying rat's furry backside on whether you choose to let spikes walk or not, but I found the academics of the article to be circumspect.

quote:

Originally posted by justanotherhunter:
I found the academics of the article to be circumspect.

Yeah and all the 141" 5 y/o deer referenced and the OP is 180-90........

My Biostat class was so far back I can't even remember what decade it was........just know that the ahem "data" didn't pass the whiff test. Too bad, it's a shame given the time frame and again if it were fenced and no extra nutrition had the potential to be a great study......though his book is excellent on aging deer. Perhaps the study was funded by the Washington Post.......

PS You don't pay for the sex, you pay the bitch to leave................

justanotherhunter. I believe you are correct and hit the proverbial nail on the head. A p-value of .05 or less would be statistically significant (valuable) and above the 5% is not significant (of no value) as predictors of occurrences happening by chance in the future.

That is why I would have preferred Dr. Kroll use Standard Deviation rather than Standard Error, which is basically an average of the mean, or average of the average (essentially). It would have had a better validity stated as descriptive statistics, discussing the degree to which the individuals differ from the mean (Standard Deviation), rather than estimating how close the population mean is to the sample mean (Standard Error), since the population itself changes with each category of this study.

Just an opinion. I'm done.

FMC---too funny.(although now that I'm married...I might look into changing my sig line...)
Larrys--I had a similar thought, although I do think that the researcher might not have taken into account the fact that he is dealing with panel data and that this will severely mess up his regressions. If I didn't have finals next week, I'd run a Hausman test, and the other regressions taking this into consideration, maybe(*cough), maybe they will become relevant.......but likely not.

quote:

Originally posted by larrys:
Truckjohn, it is called a standard deviation. You obviously have no more experience in it than Wade. Been doing it for over 40 years and I'll take my experience. In the scientific world you would state that it is within X standard deviation if it was not identical, but I guess arguing with the clueless is pointless. Keep shooting the ever that is not the same and inferior if you want. No sweat off me since I would have shot them as spikes.

Not sure where you learned stats but you might want to dust off those old books and not tell your boss about your "experienced" conclusions.

Based upon the data presented, there are NO differences between any evaluations between the 4.5 and >5.5 year old deer, as well as, the circumferences of 3.5 year old deer based upon an alpha of 0.05.

If you wanted to discuss numerical differences, then yes, you could argue your point; however, statistically there are ZERO differences between 3 and 4 point deer for those two age classes.

Being the scientist that I am, I say there are NO DIFFERENCES between the two test subjects, just as Dr. Kroll stated.

Hey!

You didn't have to play that Si-entist card I know your purdy dern sharp

Jack!

quote:

Based upon the data presented, there are NO differences between any evaluations between the 4.5 and >5.5 year old deer, as well as, the circumferences of 3.5 year old deer based upon an alpha of 0.05.

However, the P-values of those statistics are not statistically significant which in the regression would render all beta's, and therefore, any conclusions statistically irrelevant. Then again, I am only an undergrad econ student and I could be wrong. If I am wrong I would appreciate the correction before my advanced econometrics final next friday.

The OP, was "Why You Should Not Yearling Spikes".

The whole matter boils down to the questions of:

1. Are spikes not that prevelent in a natural free ranging herd?

2. Will ALL spikes grow into trophy-class bucks under natural free range conditions?

3. Are white tail deer numbers low enough in any area to warrant concern over shooting yearlings or does all of this center around making deer hunting a competetive sport, where the fattest wallet buys the biggest buck?

4. What guarantees are there that a natural, free ranging buck of ANY size, if let walk during deer season of one year, will still be alive on opening day of deer season the following year, and what guarantees are there that his rack will have gotten bigger?

5. What happened to the concept that the trophy and the reasons for hunting lie with the individual hunter and if they are comfortable with the size deer they kill and the deer they kill are LEGAL in the eyes or the law in the location they are hunting, what REAL business is it of anyone else?

Justanotherhunter,

I have a graduate degree in stats. Trust me, with an alpha of 0.05 any p-value greater than 0.05 means there are statically no differences between the test subjects.

quote:

Originally posted by ted thorn:
Hey!

You didn't have to play that Si-entist card I know your purdy dern sharp

Jack!

That's the way I role, Jack!

Booyah

hmmm, guess I'm going to need to run talk to my professor again....'cause I was pretty sure that on a t-test the corresponding P-value needs to be <.05 in order to fail to reject the null hypothesis that the two groups analyzed are the same. and my consultation of a few statistics department's websites of a few universities would support that....such as this from the University of New England:
Had p been less than alpha (.05 here), we would have rejected the null hypothesis. When the result leads us to reject the null hypothesis, we claim the result is statistically significant.
http://www.csulb.edu/~msaintg/ppa696/696stsig.htm
But then again, I am but a lowly undergrad and am easily confused. So please, (I do mean this in no way to be offensive or sarcastic as I really appreciate correction when I have a topic wrong...I just tend to be hardheaded about the proofs I accept to reverse my preconceived notions) correct me if I am wrong.

Ding!

Most folks forget that unless you do something really huge - and continue it year round... It's pretty darn hard to rise above the DNR's Deer per Square Mile statistic for your specific property/region...

Think about the logic of folks planting summer food plots hard and heavy, pouring feed through feeders... Mid summer through the end of Hunting season..... Jan 1st or whatever that date happens to be.... Then - Santa is coming and we are done with the hunting property till Summer....

Then.. January 2nd - when Food and Water is already scarce in the natural world... let the food plots go fallow and turn off the feeders....

Sure - great, you were supporting 150 deer on 100 acres... Then winter comes... Farming stops, supplemental feeding stops, and the land is bare... You are right back to the DNR's "Deer per Square Mile" statistic... with land that can NATURALLY support 20 deer per square mile... Where do the other 130 deer go?

So.. Yeah - I love seeing a ton of deer... but I also think we gotta be real careful about herd management too.... and enjoy getting the best out of the herd that our land can conservatively carry - without creating a whole bunch of boom and crash cycles in the local deer herd...

Thanks

quote:

The only thing I take issue with is that local conditions have to be taken into consideration.

We are into the second year of a drought in most of Texas, and it i more important in my opinion, to let 1.5 to 2.5 fork horns walk then let a half dozen 1.5 spikes walk. The only way that branch antlered buck is going to achieve his full genetic potential is to get enough nutrition.

Too many places here in Texas, have created an artificially high deer population thru supplemental year round feeding programs.

In the case of the area where the properties are that I work on, with the end of season approaching, many of the hunters with leases in the area will stop feeding. When that happens, the deer/feral hog/turkeys etc. will move to properties where feeding is still taking place. Also, even though quite a bit of the winter wheat has been planted and has sprouted, due to the lack of moisture it is not doing very good and between the various wildlife species feeding on it and the cattle that have been placed on those fields, if we don't get rain and soon, that food source is going to be gone. During August and September, I was putting out 600 to 800 pounds of protein in one feeder on a 320 acre place, every 12 to 14 days.

Justahunter,

If the p-values are less than 0.05, then the test subjects are significantly different. If you look at all the p-values for the 4.5 and 5.5 observations they are all greater than 0.05 meaning there are no statistical differences between the observations.

Youse guys are makin' my head hurt... I killed a young spike whitetail this fall, came off a hunting ranch onto a BLM section I was sitting on, delicious! (prolly ruined their management program)

graybird, thanks. Got it.

quote:

Originally posted by graybird:
Justanotherhunter,

I have a graduate degree in stats. Trust me, with an alpha of 0.05 any p-value greater than 0.05 means there are statically no differences between the test subjects.

To be clearer it doesn't mean that there are no differences between the measured populations but that the sample size wasn't large enough to detect any differences that might exist. The larger the sample size the tighter the confidence intervals or P values.

465H&H

quote:

Originally posted by justanotherhunter:
hmmm, guess I'm going to need to run talk to my professor again....'cause I was pretty sure that on a t-test the corresponding P-value needs to be <.05 in order to fail to reject the null hypothesis that the two groups analyzed are the same. and my consultation of a few statistics department's websites of a few universities would support that....such as this from the University of New England:
Had p been less than alpha (.05 here), we would have rejected the null hypothesis. When the result leads us to reject the null hypothesis, we claim the result is statistically significant.
http://www.csulb.edu/~msaintg/ppa696/696stsig.htm
But then again, I am but a lowly undergrad and am easily confused. So please, (I do mean this in no way to be offensive or sarcastic as I really appreciate correction when I have a topic wrong...I just tend to be hardheaded about the proofs I accept to reverse my preconceived notions) correct me if I am wrong.

Yes, the most commonly used value for rejecting the null hypothesis is 0.095, but that is up to the researcher as to what level of significance he is willing to accept. Occasionally, I have seen 0.090 used. It just depends on whether you will accept a 1 in 10 chance of being wrong or a 1 in 20 chance.

465H&H

If Wade had posted "black", I wonder how long before someone posted "no, white"?

This must be what my grandmother was referring to when she mentioned "picking fleas off a gnat's ass"

No, its called evidence. I for one think it is interesting to here reasoned debate and god for bid actual facts being discussed.

Now I don't know how many studies this Kroll person did, but one study also doesn't "prove" anything but should lead to more questions and research.

What is good about science is that being wrong is ok and new evidence can change long held beliefs.

We'll have to keep looking into the spike thing.

any deer management plan that includes "culling" any 1.5 year old bucks is fatally flawed from the start.

Well Sir, it has been working here in Texas for quite some time now. You are welcome to your opinion, but with a herd of about 4 million or more white tails, I really can't see how culling spike 1.5 year olds, epecially with the research that has been done at the Kerr WMA has caused deer management in Texas to fail.

Nature does not seem to take much time checking the age of deer before taking them out.