A cull buck, as he is referring to it, would be a buck that is deemed no longer fit for the herd. This can be interpreted any way you see fit, but it essentially means: An animal that the hunter/hunters *in this case the hunting club he belongs to* feels is genetically inferior. Most hunters would view this a deer that has say a nice 5 point horn on his left side, and a spike on the right. Or a buck that is 3+ years old but still has a very small rack and will never grow a large rack. It can also be a buck (or a doe in this instance) that is sick, injured, or malnourished.

Each person's definition of a *cull buck* will vary slightly, but the basic meaning is the same.

One of the lands i hunt in alabama, has such bad genetics that my club deemed ALL the deer on it as cull deer in an attempt to try and straighten out the bad antler genetics (98% of all the bucks have 1 good antler and a spike, or are completely missing a horn, etc).

Im going to go out on a limb here and HOPE you are talking about largest in weight!!!

a buck that is inferior in size or antler growth.
I once heard a man say you should kill all spikes as they are inferior. I don't thing so. some are young bucks that may have branched antlers next year. Sometimes if you have a drought year and the deer have little to eat or drink their antler growth may be stunned. I have been hunting for many years and can tell if a buck or doe is on the down cycle or just inferior. this is something not easily determined. It is sometimes a mistake to shoot all bucks because they do not have a big rack or shoot all does that do not have littles ones with them. To allow inferior stock to breed your deer herd is also a big mistake. THat is a hard question to answer.

Samu, were ya'll able to improve things that way? How did ya'll decide it was genetics and not just food? Were these older deer or just young, because all of our 21/2yr. old deer are long spikes with browtines, sometimes a small 5or6 pt. 31/2 old are small 7-8pts, but 41/2 are as big as you want, 215 to 275lbs. with heavy racks. So how do you tell before they are 41/2yrs. old that they are culls?

Huntr they're all culls down here ! If it's brown it's down ! Lol just kiddin .. We do have a lot of lopsided horns here too . Lots of deer with two or three horns on one side and a spike or nub on the other side . If I had to guess its the genetics . How can you tell if it's genetics or the food source ?

I have seen some big , beautiful racks come out the same place though .

Well, The property is 600 acres, of which about 40% is thick replant pine, 30% natural regroth comprised mostly of young oaks and gum trees, and the rest is old standing hardwoods (which are all either white oaks, red oaks or bay trees). Me and another club member who hunts that piece of land with me, keep the food plots planted with corn and soybeans during the summer to ensure plenty of feed. We concluded its not the food because all of the deer are extremely healthy, the average weight is 180LBs or so for deer older than a year 1/2.

Last season i killed 3 bucks off this piece of land. One was a 5 year old 4 point, the 2nd was a 3 year old spike with only 1 horn, and the last one was a 6+ year old 4 point (old and grey faced). All 3 of them weighed over 200LBs (the max of the scale we had at the camp). I have trail cam pics of dozens of other bucks on the property like this, either OLD deer with tiny racks or missing antlers, or spikes on 1 side. There's a couple really nice bucks that have been eluding us for years, one is a big 9point the other i haven't gotten a pic of but have seen glimpses of him, but i don't seem to see many of the deer that share the same antler characteristics of these two. A club member of ours did however, miss a 7 point the year before last, that has a HUGE 6 point right antler and about a 14 inch spike on the left.

I would say all three bucks described would most likely be called cull bucks by 99.9% of trophy hunters.

All three bucks described by Samu would be considered cull bucks on my lease.

All these deer are 41/2 or older. How would they be counted? Chou, if i had to push my wife in a pirogue it would be brown its down too.lol I've killed many big bucks, but i dont call myself a trophy hunter and i dont think any deer should be called a 'cull'. How do you know that cull antler buck doesnt have a gene that improves their ability to withstand drought or immunity to EHD and other diseases? Definately sounds like samu has a problem, but the presence of some big deer leads me to suspect nutrition more than genetics.

Samu

example

Here are some of the bucks

Thats amazing, very healthy deer, looks just like the one i call leftside. That sure seems genetic if he stays that way.

M

My boys first year in a pirogue by hisself . They get big fast !

M

Hes gettin fast too . Leavin me in the dust .

M

No drought problems round here

This is how we do it huntr ... My lil boy can push his on pirogue now !! Ive pushed him around the swamp with me for 7 or 8 years . He likes it better than the deer farming beleive it or not.
He would cull any of the deer in those pics especially the young ones in that first pic !

To answer your question, we just recently decided to cull them all off. Unfortunately getting certain members of our club to NOT shoot the first thing that walks out the woods is impossible, luckily everyone kinda sticks to their favorite areas/tracts of land, but i knew that when i joined. But on the good side, theres only 2 of us that hunt this particular piece. But with last season's heat, and total lack of deer movement due to the amount of acorns and green folliage all the way into january, we didn't kill much off it. I managed to kill my 3 buck limit as i said, and a couple does, but it was hard hunting for the bucks. Infact if it wasn't for the rut i'd have only killed 1. I tried bringing some guests to help, but whenever i had someone with me, the deer wouldn't move, or at least the bucks wouldn't.
I talked to a wildlife biologist at the Big Branch NWR headquarters the other day who told me i need to kill off a large number of the does as well. He says the bad antler genetics can be passed of by the mother as well as the father. Plus from what he can tell, the population is VERY high, which i already knew (its WAY high in that area). So we may shoot a lot more does this year. My hope is to eliminate enough of the scrubs and let the few decent rack bucks breed more. *shrug* Time will tell.

Choupic, even tho a lot of tensas is farms, thats the good land. The lowest, wettest, and thickest palmetto or wrp/crp land is the only deer habitat left. We hunt in rubber boots and pirogues(bobcats) just like ya'll do. I've spent last week and the next bushogging and trimming roads so we can hunt easy. I believe in doing my work now, not during hunting season.

THOSE DEER IN THE PICTURES ARE HEALTHY SO THEY HAVE BAD GENES. PROBABLY FROM A LOT OF IN BREEDING WHICH HAS BEEN PROVEN ON FARMS THAT BUCKS WILL BREED THEIR MOTHERS AND SISTERS. THIS LEADS TO A DEFORMATION OF SOME GENES. SHOT THEM ALL EVEN THE DOES AND START OVER. THIS IS ONLY MY OPINION AND AS MY WIFE WOULD SAY I AM ONLY RIGHT HALF OF THE TIME.

We do have a couple places on high land that we can go throw corn and have deer coming within a day or two . It's nice to have some place like that if we run low on deer meat . I don't have anything against planting plots and feeding . It's nice to do both though especially if your not seeing deer in one terrain you just jump back on the other .

Y'all have some awesome deer up . Even some of yalls lopsided deer I would put on the wall !

Choupic, just pointing out that even tho we may hunt different, either way u got to put in the time. Deerman, u have hit on the prob of management, no one is the same. You assume were trying to raise big racks, not true, i manage for large bodies. Large, healthy bucks usually have big horns. I think about 25% have geneticaly weak horns, about 25% have large horns and about 50% average horns. You cant worry about what u cant control, you can control age and food, not genetics. Any buck over 41/2 is a trophy to us, only thing the weak horns are just as hardto see as the big ones.lol I have hundreds of pics of leftside, yet i've only seen him 3 times in 6yrs. in the season.

huntr, I see your point and have never looked at it that way. Deer are strange and unpredictable. I have hunted a good deer for 3 years now and have only seen him once and could not get a shot at him yet i have many pictures of him. I have pictures of him in the day at various times and have not found a pattern for his movements. I believe he sences my being in the area. I will keep trying and maybe if i get a shot at him I won't take it.

Found this deers shed horn from 31/2 yrs old, chunky 6pt with stickers. Next year he had 18, then 20 the next. At 61/2 he was huge frame 7pt. 282lbs Which one of these years would he be a cull buck.

A cull is a buck that is screwed up and will never amount to anything. Anything being defined differently by different people.

Lack of brow tines is one of the easiest characteristics to weed out. IE it is the most inheritable.

Most people are trying to influence future generations of bucks. Research has shown this isn't going to work unless you have a high fenced population.

Reality is that what really amounts to a cull buck in most peoples eyes is a young buck which isn't truly inferior genetically. Could just be age, or maybe a set back from something like an injury or it got sick or is just a late bloomer.

Mike, agree with u on most points, but u absolutely can influence ur future bucks, if its food. When we first came to our land we had deer with very small or no browtines. After about 5 yrs. of clover and protein pellewts and rice bran, our deer have much better brows, lots of doubles and even triples. Just like u say, most lopsided horns are young deer and they grow out of it, if given the chance.