MrT wrote:The answer to this should be vastly different depending on what part of the country or your state that you're hunting.
Yeah, figured I'd get an eye roll from most posting my views from Iowa, I'm not a fan of APR's.
I'm not a fan of APR's, though we don't really have them as people are talking about, using them to increase the age of bucks. You can tag a spike with an antlerless tag, so that is inverse of what people are talking. The first 20+ years of deer hunting for me was as a meat hunter, first legal deer was tagged. Back then, any-sex tags were by lottery and I prayed each year entering it that I would be drawn. Much easier to put meat in the freezer with an any-sex tag. Shot lots of small antlered bucks using antlered-only tags as you might only see one legal deer all gun season.
I heard a stat that Iowa buck harvest each year is 75% 1.5 year olds. Tons of button bucks get shot each year and tagged with anterless tags. See this weblink for the breakdown of Iowa harvest:
https://gooutdoorsiowa.com/RealTimeHarvestReport.aspx The chart doesn't break down the antlered buck harvest by age class. So there is still the potential to shift the Iowa harvest from population management to trophy management, though I don't think APR's are the ticket.
APR's would hinder our main population management tool; party hunting during shotgun seasons. Personally, I'm not a huge fan of the practice of sharing tags (all members of the group can continue to hunt until all tags are filled), but it survives due to tradition and because it helps keep the population in check. Party hunting used to be a lot of deer drives, which makes for running shots. Might be hard to judge if a deer was legal under APR's in such a situation. I see fewer and fewer large hunting groups as the years go by. Permission is difficult to get anymore, lots of smaller parcels bought by hunters who prefer to sit rather than drive deer during the shotgun season.
Inside spread restrictions would bum me out. I like deer racks that are "tall and tight". I don't find the extremely wide racks appealing. I'll shoot both, but prefer the tall, narrow racked bucks with beams almost touching at the tips. It would pain me to let such a buck walk if it was obvious that it was mature yet he lacked inside spread.
Rather than APR's to "improve" Iowa, I'd suggest 1 buck tag per year (residents can get 2, resident landowners can get 3), keep the regulations the same (keep guns out of the rut and stop adding more weapons to existing seasons).