Antler point restriction unpopular in Ozarks

By Bob Todd
If you attended a meeting recently in Piedmont concerning the possibility of antler point restrictions, you’d say the idea doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in a hot place.
With a crowd attending, only one individual “voted” for the regulation.
Missouri has had two years now of an antler point restriction in some counties - mainly northwest Missouri, but a few counties south of the Missouri River too.
The regulation began as an approach to encourage taking more does. You control the deer population by the harvest of does, and some parts of Missouri have a lot more deer than most people would like.
When you take a buck, you’ve taken only one deer. When you take a doe, you take not only that deer, but one to three more that would be born in the spring. Deer are polygamous, so you can take a lot of bucks without much impact on production the following spring.
Take does, on the other hand, and you’ve impacted the population. That’s a good thing if you are trying to put a lid on the population or reduce it. That’s a bad thing if you want to let the population expand.
The antler point restriction calls for hunters to let bucks pass until they have at least four points on at least one side of their rack. So for the first year of the restriction, at least, hunters find themselves more likely to take a doe.
The up side is that there should be more larger deer in the woods in following years. Generally, hunters would prefer to take an eight point deer over a four or six pointer.
For the eastern Ozarks, then, an antler point restriction would mean turning up the heat on does, probably reducing the deer population.
One reason there is so much opposition to the idea is that most folks in this area think the deer population could stand to grow a little more, not shrink. A lot of hunters voluntarily limit their harvest to bucks even through deer of either sex may be taken.
Another reason is the hunting situation here. In agricultural areas such as northwest Missouri, it may be fairly easy for a hunter to count points. Deer can be seen at great distances and scoped with binoculars, in many cases.
Here, on the other hand, hunters either can’t see deer at considerable distances or find themselves too close at hand to have time for examining deer with optics. It is much more difficult to count points here.
There are a lot of complicating facts. Does here tend to mature later than up north, producing fewer fawns over a life time. Taking an Ozark doe, therefore, has more impact on the deer population than it does up north.
That’s what we think we know about the Ozarks.
On the Ozark border it may be another matter. Cape, Perry and Ste. Genevieve counties, along the Mississippi River, are more like north Missouri. Deer mature faster on the richer soils, and with a higher human population, conflicts with deer are much more common than in the Ozarks.
To at least some folks there, antler point restrictions seem like win-win. You reduce the deer population and increase the number of big bucks at the same time.
There are two sides to every coin, however. Regulations don’t produce exactly the results you’d expect, for instance. You’d think antler restrictions would only work for one year. You’d simply skip a year class of young bucks.
But after two years experience up north, it doesn’t seem to work that way. Doe kill in northwest Missouri is still up. There is some mortality besides hunting that takes some of the males that were passed over. And the bigger, older males are also smarter. They tend to stay put in daylight as they get older, while young bucks continue to move about.
In the Ozarks, the other side of the coin is that in some areas, hunting pressure is so low that an antler restriction probably wouldn’t have the impact on the doe population that you might fear. (On the other hand it would have little impact on bucks, either.)
TRAVELER’S VIEW
With what we know now, we think an antler restriction would be a bad idea for the Ozarks. It may be workable in the Mississippi River counties, providing sentiments favor such a rule.
Our big concern, however, is MDC’s tendency to sit on rules forever and ever. If, as a result of the meetings they’re holding, they decide not to have antler restrictions in the Ozarks, it will be a cold day in August before they revisit the issue. Sentiments expressed in 2006 will still be cited as what the public wants in 2016.
If antler restrictions are begun for the river counties, they too will tend to stay in place for a decade or more.
Traveler thinks we don’t know enough to come to any long-term conclusions just yet. With just two years of the antler restrictions under our belts, we don’t know what the long-term impacts may be in Missouri conditions.
So, if we had our druthers, MDC would leave the Ozarks alone and put antler restrictions on the river counties - if support is strong. Then the agency would come back in three or four years and present what they’ve learned from five or six years of restrictions elsewhere.
And . . . a point overlooked in the discussion is that people who want bigger bucks can voluntarily pass on small bucks. If enough landowners in a community adopt this policy for hunting on their land, they can impact the number of big bucks in the herd.

Two dozen years ago, March, 1982

Two dozen years ago, management of Lake Wappapello changed from the Memphis District to the St. Louis District of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The change set off a flurry of recreational construction projects, but also a shift in management attitudes that led to closure of many accesses.
At the same time the Corps at Clearwater Lake was trying to cope with a shortage of funds. Part time summer help was all but eliminated. Rangers were housed in what is today the visitor center. Campers had to pay at the gate and trash collection was centralized.
We caught Big Creek just right for a float from Des Arc to Sam A. Baker State Park. It includes some whitewater rapids where Al Agnew managed to break an unbreakable paddle. There was snow on the ground in sheltered spots, but we caught several nice smallmouth bass.
The Missouri House of Representatives had passed a bill to take half the income of the Department of Conservation to spend on parks, soils and urban water problems - for 10 years. Then the money would go into the general revenue fund.
The measure did not pass the Senate, however, and therefore did not go on the ballot.
Meanwhile, changes in fishing regulations had been “on hold” for several years, but MDC was showing signs of being ready to make some changes.
Among changes would be a much wider use of slot limits for bass, and a generally lower creel limit for crappie. Size limits for crappie would also be considered.
Clearwater and Wappapello were exempt from the 15 limit on crappie, and the only crappie size limit in this area is the eight-inch limit at Wappapello that goes into affect this year. Some thought the exemption here was a response to the severe criticism MDC got from an experimental limit of 10 on Lake Wappapello a few years before.
Looking ahead to spring turkey season, most of the Ozarks were open, but only Adair County was open in north Missouri .
MDC agreed to trade about 400 wild turkeys for 1,000 ruffed grouse, mostly from Indiana.
If a predicted half-inch of rain had fallen on top of the unpredicted two or three inches, Black River might have flooded even faster. So quipped Bob Todd and Al Agnew after a very wet trip trying to fish for walleye. Al wore two sets of rain gear and still got wet all over.

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