Antler Points

The Trophy Bucks Program is one of four major programs of deer herd management on R* System lands. (The R* Deer and the R* System are hypothetical enterprises under design. They may exist someday.) The other three major programs are:

1. Land protection and crop loss reduction (the Protection Program)
2. Sustained Great Harvest (the SGH Program)
3. Sustained Great Population (SGP Program)

Publications describing these three programs in addition to the overall deer management system of the R* System are available from the address below.

The Trophy Bucks Program reflects knowledge gained over 50 years, millions of dollars in research, knowledge of local conditions, and a unique situation within the R* System. The special conditions are:

1. attention to the specific objectives of landowners (allowing land to be entered in the most appropriate program)
2. informed hunters
3. intensively managed lands
4. data collection and analysis with immediate feedback to improve the program and the system.

The Trophy Bucks Program is a synthesis of economics, the value of land, the biology of the white-tailed deer, its physiology, and knowledge of hunters. All of these are not discussed here, only the basics of the program itself are listed.

1. It is legal
2. Trophic hunting is not an act of gambling of "getting lucky." It is a studied activity and there are additional costs of producing and therefore taking trophy bucks.
3. The trophy is very important. Great care is taken to assure proper care of the antlers, skull, cape, and to assure measurements are taken properly. Access to a superior group of taxidermists is provided. An alternative score to the Boone and Crockett and Pope procedures is available.
4. Superior photography is a part of successful hunts.
5. Special hunts are conducted for archery, muzzleloaders, and firearms.
6. All results of hunters and animals taken enter a data bank for improvements in the herd, the hunt, and to assure recognition of those people who take superior bucks.
7. Funds from the hunt are used to conduct research on deer at Virginia Tech.
8. We manage the hunt. The hunt itself must be a wonderful experience. Superior antlers taken in unsafe, unhealthy, miserable conditions with unpleasant social conditions and wasted meat, hide, or other problems is not the R* System's concept of a trophy hunt.
9. Pre-season guided trips are available so a hunter may "learn" his or her hunting area for the managed hunt.
10. We manage the area using Landsat, vegetation sampling, and other procedures. We create or maintain areas in a special mix of grasses. Deer eat browse (twigs and leaves) but they do best on grasses and small plants.
11. We do soil and forage analyses and maintain careful records of phosphorous, calcium, and nitrogen availability.
12. We encourage acorn-producing trees but we do not depend upon them to produce superior deer.
13. In years of absolute mast failure we may feed corn in select areas.
14. We do not feed deer in winter.
15. We work to increase the weight of male deer.
16. We relate antler size (circumference of the base one inch above the burr) and points to body weight. The heavier, the body the larger the antlers.
17. In a special archery hunt, we remove large spike-bucks (on the possible but unproven grounds that we can select against these and improve the genetic base of the population. Of course does also retain these characteristics and pass them on to off-spring.)
18. We remove a specified number of does and yearling bucks to bring the population to a decided number in an early season.
19. We harvest trophy bucks in a short intensive period every three years. We can do this every year because we rotate this season over all of our areas. One third of the areas have this harvest system every year.
20. Five areas are harvested in rotation annually producing a 5-year old (or greater) trophy buck population. These areas are also hunted annually in doe-, antlerless-, and forked-antler hunts only.
21. Hunters purchase a permit to hunt an area (a unit and stand) at a particular time. Each permit specifies the type of deer that may be taken. (Failure to do so forfeits deposits and cancels membership.)
22. The secret of the R* System work is in achieving low deer densities, high amounts of food, high production due to the food available per deer, and high buck weights...simultaneously.
23. Small refuges (30 acres) (no hunting) are retained.
24. Hunters, habitat, harvest, doe production are all monitored and numbers used in a predictive and decision-making model.
25. Predation (fawn) and other mortality will be suppressed.
26. Maximum diversity of types of hunter opportunities will be sought (wilderness, social, etc.)
27. Guided tours will be conducted to see large-antlered deer during "the rut." Blinds will be provided for photographer opportunities.
28. Research related to antlers and deer weight will be encouraged.
29. Publications describing the work and the hunters' role in effective deer resource management will be made available.
30. Night transect tours are conducted.
31. An annual trophy display is made.
32. An annual educational conference is sponsored.

The above steps are numerous and complicated and need to be achieved simultaneously. These are not steps in a sequence but parts of a total system, the Trophy Bucks Program.

Experts of the Program are available for information lectures and multi-media presentations.

For other information on how to have your land included in the program or to become a hunter within the program, contact the R* System.

This Web site is maintained by R. H. Giles, Jr.
Last revision January 17, 2000.