Herd improvement as defined by? Are we talking mature bucks, or trophy bucks? I would imagine that they are not automatically one and the same. I don't know that I hear hunters proclaim "I am a mature buck hunter" very often, but I do hear "I'm after a trophy buck" a lot.
If genetics are third on the list of important attributes necessary for trophy buck production, after food and age, then like fish I'm assuming they are the most difficult to manipulate. We can feed our fish and plant food plots for the deer, and we can release those younger fish with high Wr just like we can pass on those younger deer. But what do we do about genetics? From what I've read on the forum through the years, we breed selectively and cull, repeating as necessary, until we see the results we hoped for. We cull the less desirable fish, not those that show the greatest potential.
