Do you agree with this ?

[stratocaster]

QDM starts with your neighbors! If your neighboring properties / hunters are not on board it will NEVER work!

 

We started a QDMA in upstate P.A right around when the 3 on one side rule started.. Our QDMA started with my uncles property (50 acers) and the neighbors property (64 acers) then the next year another neighbor (80 acers) and another neighbors (150 acers) and over the course of about 8 years and one neighbor talking to the next, now that QDMA  is up over 2700 acers of connected properties that are all on board with doing food plots / habitat,  shooting your does early, and shooting bucks that are 3-1/2 years or better! In return we are now seeing multiple bucks every year over 130''-150''. In years past that would be a real surprise to see a deer like that up there, now it has become the norm and every year more properties get on board and bigger bucks are being killed! What is nice about the program is everyone communicates with one another about what they are seeing and comparing trail cam pics of what their inventory and doe to buck ratio's are.. Just this year there was a great 150'' deer that was on my uncles property all during fall bow that no one killed, had pics of it all the way up to rifle season.. opening day of rifle that buck was killed by a neighbor almost 2miles away, and we could not be happier for him! it was the biggest buck of his life and we would have never know what happened to that buck if the neighbor was'ent on board with the program. Now he has trail pics to go along with his memories!

 

The only reason that neighbor killed that buck was because of being patent and passing up the smaller ones all during bow season because he knew of all the trail cam pics / inventory of what was out there in the neighboring properties and his own..They cant get to be 3,4,5 years old if you kill them when there a 6pt. I dont know if this could ever work in jersey with the way the regs are and the mentality of the average new jersey deer hunter. I try to practice the same here on my 22acers but i know i the neighbors dont because the other neighbors dont and so on! But the proff is in the pudding!

 

New Jersey needs to start with the 3pt on one side rule. and only one buck per season, just by doing that in a few years you will have a huge increase in 2-1/2 yr bucks and then maybe the average ''Brown its down" jersey slayer will see what a little QDM can do. Dont get me wrong though, even up there with everyone on board we still let junior and first time hunters take what they want but the funny part is after they sit in on a neighbors QDM meeting and get educated and see whats out there, they are passing up the little ones too!

When you can cobble together almost 4.5 sq miles of land and everyone around has the same goal then it works.  Can't do that in NJ.  Glad you had the experience of hunting on land that has a 150" deer. That would keep me motivated.

[TDietz]

yes, I agree with sign. pretty basic stuff. IMO, I think you need about 2500 continuous acres encompassing a drainage/river bottom, with a north slope and a south slope, to really have a chance at qdm. NJ has too many small land owners to make it feasible. And, too many roads. I think, (and know), that a lot of nice bucks, big bucks, are poached from the road.

 

I bought the first issue of North American Whitetail in the early 80s and subscribed for decades. Read everything by the Wenzels, Fratzke and Rothaar. But, you can't kill what ain't there. So, deciding to challenge myself via a different route I dropped out of the high tech, went back to my roots,( yes nostalgia plays a part of it), and haven't looked back. If I'm hunting, I want to kill something, and a small buck with a low tech bow does it for me. No bait, up close and personal, able to watch my arrow strike it's mark, Doesn't get any better.

[stratocaster]

yes, I agree with sign. pretty basic stuff. IMO, I think you need about 2500 continuous acres encompassing a drainage/river bottom, with a north slope and a south slope, to really have a chance at qdm. NJ has too many small land owners to make it feasible. And, too many roads. I think, (and know), that a lot of nice bucks, big bucks, are poached from the road.

 

I bought the first issue of North American Whitetail in the early 80s and subscribed for decades. Read everything by the Wenzels, Fratzke and Rothaar. But, you can't kill what ain't there. So, deciding to challenge myself via a different route I dropped out of the high tech, went back to my roots,( yes nostalgia plays a part of it), and haven't looked back. If I'm hunting, I want to kill something, and a small buck with a low tech bow does it for me. No bait, up close and personal, able to watch my arrow strike it's mark, Doesn't get any better.

Yeah, I used to read NAW a lot as well, until i realized that the bucks in that mag will never appear before me in NJ so it just made me more miserable to see a giant buck killed in OH, Iowa, Mont, Illinois in the same issue.  I couldn't take it anymore so I stopped reading it.