Published: January 22, 2009 11:41 pm      

Rod-Gun photos show dandies

When you look through Rod & Gun, which will be inserted into tomorrow’s Cumberland Times-News, I’m guessing that some of you, maybe a lot of you, will have the same reaction as did I, that being, “Wow. Those are some pretty nice bucks.”

The publication kicks off with a cover shot of Bob Weaver of Springfield, W.Va., and the trophy buck he shot on Middle Ridge in Hampshire County.

Of course there are photos of smaller bucks and of does. The common denominator is the smile on the face of the person who is in the photo with the deer.

But, back to nice bucks.

Some of you may be aware of a recent article in Newsweek in which the premise is that hunters, because they shoot bucks with big antlers, are taking those genetic traits out of the gene pool and selecting for deer with smaller antlers.

You can find the article electronically by mousing up Newsweek and searching around for it, sort of the way you’d walk through the woods looking for turkey scratchings.

I remember arguments decades ago in which one side said we were selecting for ring-necked pheasants that would not flush by shooting those that did or that we were bringing about the repopulation of the elk herd so that it would be filled with silent bulls because we shot the bulls that bugled.

Doesn’t appear to be the case. Cockbird pheasants still flush and male wapiti still bugle.

Speaking of the whitetail bucks, though, and they constituted the main species of concern in the Newsweek article, there appear to be more and more of them showing up with big racks. That being the case, it would seem to shoot holes in the premise put forward by the Newsweek article.

A learned deer-hunting companion of mine pointed out that half of the DNA provided to a fawn comes from the doe. Makes sense. I have observed that male human beings who are tall tend to have tall mothers or grandmothers.

Anyway, a person who shoots a buck with very large antlers is for sure shooting a buck that has lived a number of years. That being said, that buck, be it three or four or five years old, has been procreating for a few years anyhow, passing on his genes and theoretically his large antlers to male offspring.

As with any article, I would have appreciated a quote or two in the Newsweek piece from some respected biologist or geneticist with the opposing view.

Even if you or I didn’t kill a buck this year with massive headgear, it is pleasing to learn via Rod & Gun tomorrow that there are a number of hunters who did. Those photos show us that some trophy bucks run these hills and that, upon occasion, one or more of us is in the right place at the right time to bag them.

Contact Michael A. Sawyers at msawyers@times-news.com.