re: What do you consider a cull buck

I'm no expert on the subject but I watched my brother in law take a deer herd from laughable to enviable in a matter of a few years. The first deer they culled were does. Once they got the number of does down to what they thought was reasonable they started shooting any buck that looked like it did not have the genetics they were looking for. A two year old or older, skinny necked, small bodied spike was history. A 2.5 year old 6 point with no brow tines was history. I guess the easiest way to explain what they did, was that they preserved the bucks they wanted and shot everything else. They wanted big bodied bucks, with well formed racks, that had decent mass for their age. If a buck was not one of the chosen few, it died. Thinning the herd and providing high protein feed transformed that ranch into what I would call a poor man's trophy ranch.

One other thing. They owned this ranch and did not lease. So the first couple of years they let lots of friends come on the ranch and take deer. Otherwise it would have taken a lot longer to get the herd right. They would tell you what deer you were probably going to see at a given stand and which ones were off limits.