According to Dugas, once hunters have decided just what is possible on their lands of choice for quality deer management — they then have to make a decision on what can be harvested.
Dugas and his family currently manage deltaic soils (hardwoods bottomlands), and over the years they have experimented with selective harvesting of bucks in many different ways.
“Decisions made such as taking bucks by ‘so many inches wide’ or ‘main beam lengths’ or even by an ‘x amount of points on one side’ don’t work in my opinion,” claimed Dugas.
“We manage by the numbers,” said the bowhunter. “We will make an agreement at the beginning of the year to kill (let’s say) two bucks per hunter.
“And last year on 6,500 acres, we killed seven racked bucks ranging from the 130s to 170s (B&C points),” he said.
“And we let the hunter decide what he will pass up. . . or kill that season. We do prefer however that hunters, who are mostly family members, pass up 2 ½- and 3 ½- year old bucks. You try to kill older deer, but you can cull some as well. I actually think you need to harvest across the age classes depending on the lands you hunt.”
Dugas then explained the family’s encounters with a buck nicknamed “Hollywood.”
“My son, Jacob, was the first here to capture some video of Hollywood,” said the bowhunter. “Most people who would see Hollywood wouldn’t pass him up because his antlers range from the 140s to the 150s,” he said. “We first noted this buck’s characteristics at three years of age, and that was three years ago. This year we are expecting to see him again.
“You have to be willing to pass bucks like that up for successful quality deer management to occur — especially if you’re managing in bottomland hardwoods,” advised Dugas.
“Near this ground blind where my son captured him in video, Hollywood showed up every time he had a videocam. I want to hunt bucks like that — those I consider ‘stupid’ because they’re just not that sharp. . . and that’s what makes them available to be harvested.
“Just because a buck sports 170 inches doesn’t make him a smart old buck,” explained Dugas.
