I have to agree.  Not all bucks are meant to be "Trophys", not matter how old they get. 

Some will produce massive antler growth and some won't.  It's just like in cattle, some are great beef and some aren't.  You have to use more than an a random width range to determine a buck's maturity. 

Some bucks will have very nice mass or tine length but will never go beyond 13inches of width, so do I have to let a 5.5yr old buck with 140+B&C points walk because he doesn't have width or should I use his neck size, head size, shoulder width, and other factors to determine his maturity?

The 13 inch rule has to be shown for what it is.  It is an incomplete, obscure rule to determine something that can not be determined by antler width alone.

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My understanding of the rule was to allow young bucks to grow. Unfortunently you all are correct. Not all bucks will make trophy class and most will not even make it into the nice buck class. The answer to this problem is not simple, The deer herd has to be managed th insure a good gene pool and still not over harvest the deer herd. EDUCATION OF THE HUNTING POPULATIONS on deer management and ageing is by far the best program, not the best and easiest but we need to start somewhere.

i agree the state intent was to let the heard mature, but at the same time i think they missed the gene pool issue. education of the hunting public is the answer. not generic rules that rely on nothing to do with age. lets say to harvest a buck over a spike in one of these countys, you must first passs a deer ageing class????  what if this county has a lot of wide rack genes and everyone is shooting 3 year old seventeen inch wide racks???  good bucks and something that needs to stay in the gene pool!  but not shooting the bad 12" genes of 4 year olds??  her is an example of a buck we shot on one of our ranches in menard years ago. 12 inch spread scored 165...5year old..he would be illeagle!!!!!...lol...val

I took the chance on one this weekend. I knew it would be close, but I decided to take the shot at a 4 year old 4X2 that I realy wanted to get rid of. Even when I took him to the processor they re-measured him to make sure he was legal. His spread was just a hair over the 13 in mark. Another quarter inch or so less and he woulda been illegal. Glad I decided to take him. But I dang near didn't, for fear of the law.

Guns don't kill people....Its those pesky little bullets making lots of holes that all the blood leaks out of.

I agree the 13 in. law is a problem.  We have several bucks that are never going to be any good and can't shoot them while we are blasting the ones that will grow larger.

The program seems to be working on my friends ranch near Gonzales. Here is a buck his son took a couple weeks ago. Also a pic of a buck in Williamson Co. where the program has been in place for a few years.

again i will say the picture of the buck i see is a 4.5 year old deer and needs to stay in the gene pool, but he will be shot and his inferior 12" cousin will get to breed the does! a few more years down the road ....that is all you will have!

this law causes a real problem where i hunt. i hunt on public land and i am lucky if i see a deer with a 13 inch spread. i have seen several nice bucks this season that i would normally take but instead i have yet to shoot a buck becuase they were all borderline.