Well, it is the single most hot topic at the Arkansas hunting chat site. In season, out of season, all the time. "We" have seen our deer decline to where we used to see 40 a day easy, and now that is a HIGH season total in many places. Yes, the 3 point rule has increased by a percentage the average antler size of the harvest. It has its place. When I grew up, I shot a buck. I see horns? 2 inches? BAM. Back then, I worked, and the total season was two one-week periods, staring on Monday, ending on Saturday. That's it.

Then does began to be legal. Wow. More deer to shoot. Plus we had like a 20,000,000 to 1 ratio because everybody had shot every buck every year for 30 years.

The 3 point rule was put in in 1998. At that time, I started doing what I'd never done. I started watching deer. Wow. Deer do this. Deer do that! Who'd a thunk it? There's a buck!! Wait.........it has 2 on this side, does the other have 3???? And a by product of that was that I learned more about deer in general.

Fast forward to 2014. The deer rich woods of the Pine Plantation South Arkansas that held small but plentiful deer..........they began to disappear! ??? Now we have coyotes taking over. Same old bobcats. Mt. Lions are seen and shot where never before. Bears are all OVER South Arkansas, where they never were......these are all massively multiple confirmed sightings, not hear say. I hear if you have a lot of carnivores, you have a lot of deer. Poppycock. Another 'generality' about deer that isn't true. We have more rabbits than anytime in my life. They're tasty too.

Meanwhile AGFC is doing what America is doing politically. They are mimicking an old method tried elsewhere, and which has failed miserably, but they're so far behind that they think it's smart to do. And it's destroying not just deer, but deer HUNTING. Folks are abandoning it right and left, cause there's nothing to see..........and the by product that SHOULD be there.....the bigger antlers due to reduced density.....are not there either. Oh, I admit this..........there are a FEW great big deer killed every year, sometimes bigger than usual. One was 120 yards from the property line at my farm. So some folks think "Well maybe it's working".

Then, add in that a brazillion acres are clearcut in S. Arkansas, where they used to hide it, now you can literally see for miles. Flat nothing. Like a bomb zone. Deer love small clearcuts. But 1,000 acres at a time, and another 1,000 1/4 of a mile away, and another, and another??? Nope.

We get told "Well the weather affected it. You are not in the woods enough to really know. Deer are there but they've learned to pattern you".....and 1,000 other things. Well, if they are there, they are flying because they aren't leaving footprints. Plenty of bear prints! Plenty of cat prints! But deer? Just a few.

And the single most prevalent cry now is "WE MUST CONVINCE THEM TO SHORTEN THE SEASON".

It's a soapbox item for me, and a lifelong passion, and it hurts to see where we are. And when I look at South Carolina, I realize how stupid we are.