I didn't want to confuse the talk on the "culling" thread so am starting a new one. In this case I am not talking about taking the least desirable deer from the herd or any particular age class. I am concerned with the ability to take out a strong genetic trait that is being seen within a small deer herd (lets say 30 deer). We had a mature buck last year we named Medusa with a normal 4 pt side on the right and a multitude of points (8 in total) growing from his base with no discernible main beam involved. I passed him up looking for a prettier buck and later in the season noticed another young buck with the same configuration (4 pt side and 4-5 tines growing from his base with no main beam). At that point I considered his ugliness a genetic trait and decided he needed to go and of course we never got another shot at him. Fast forward to this year and look who shows up on the cameras the first week I put them out
This year he has an obvious main beam (or 2 or 3) but as you can tell is still really weird on the left side with a total of 8 points. The more concerning part is the young buck from last year is back as well and looks similar to what Medusa looked like last year (4 on the left and 8 on the right with no main beam) AND there are two NEW really young bucks with the same exact setup (4 pts on the left and a glob of points growing from their base on the right). To me this has to be a genetic thing going on in this herd as many of them as there are with the same rack configuration. Is this something that can be killed out of the herd (for example if we killed Medusa and all three of the other young deer that have his same traits early in the season) would that do the trick? I can only assume that there may be a doe or two in the herd also that carries that gene along as well so I know there is no 100% fix, but if we could see 1 of these kind of bucks per season that would be much better than having 4 of them spreading these genes around.
This year he has an obvious main beam (or 2 or 3) but as you can tell is still really weird on the left side with a total of 8 points. The more concerning part is the young buck from last year is back as well and looks similar to what Medusa looked like last year (4 on the left and 8 on the right with no main beam) AND there are two NEW really young bucks with the same exact setup (4 pts on the left and a glob of points growing from their base on the right). To me this has to be a genetic thing going on in this herd as many of them as there are with the same rack configuration. Is this something that can be killed out of the herd (for example if we killed Medusa and all three of the other young deer that have his same traits early in the season) would that do the trick? I can only assume that there may be a doe or two in the herd also that carries that gene along as well so I know there is no 100% fix, but if we could see 1 of these kind of bucks per season that would be much better than having 4 of them spreading these genes around.
I just don't want it to become the norm where it starts overtaking the genetics of the herd and we end up with nothing but funky antlered bucks. I would say we have a total of 12-16 bucks within the herd and we now have 4 with this same genetic trait (that is 20%-25% of the herd). My 10yr old is going to do everything in his power to make sure Medusa does not bread this season, but I am questioning whether we should go ahead and target the others as well or if there is not much to worry about with this trait "taking over" the herd.
Comment