By Dave Hurteau

I know many of you have been eagerly awaiting Kip Adam’s answers to your questions about QDM and the QDMA, and here they are—in spades. I originally planned to have Kip answer about half a dozen of the best queries, to keep it manageable. But he took it upon himself to respond to many more, and in greater detail, than I would have dared to ask. Kip posted his answers in the comments section of the previous post, but I wanted to make sure none of you missed them. So I’m posting them here, too.

You may agree with what Kip has to say or not. His answers might even change your mind. But in any case, let’s thank Kip for taking the time to do us this favor.

All right, here we go:

By Dave Hurteau

Buddyboy25 won our last rack-scoring contest and walked away with a brand new bow. And that’s great. But the rest of you walked away with nothing. And we—who are always thinking of you—just can’t stand it.

So we’re giving you another chance, and we have another great bow to give away. The Attack is Bear Archery’s brand new flagship model for 2010, boasting a top IBO speed of 340 fps, a 31-inch axle-to-axle length, a 7-inch brace height, and a retail price of $749.99. And it too can be yours. All you have to do is score some more bucks.

By Dave Hurteau

APR may be the three most controversial letters in deer hunting, judging by Scott Bestul’s last post. If not, they’re probably QDM. There’s no question that quality deer management has changed the face of deer hunting over the last couple of decades. But there are plenty of other questions:

Is QDM good for deer hunting?
Is it really all about big bucks, and nothing else?
Is it realistic for the average hunter?
What precisely is QDM?
What is it not?  

I suspect you have plenty of your own questions, and graciously agreeing to sit in the hot seat and answer them is Kip Adams, Northern Director of Education and Outreach with the Quality Deer Management Association’s (qdma.com).  An avid hunter and certified wildlife biologist, Adams has a B.S. in Wildlife and Fisheries Science from Penn State University and an M.S. in Wildlife from the University of New Hampshire.

By Dave Hurteau

There’s a friendly battle that goes on between whitetail experts and writers who interview them. We, the writers, want concrete answers and hard, fast rules—because these make for better headlines: “5 Ways Big Bucks Are Different” or “3 Secret Surefire Strategies.” On the flip side, experts tend to start every answer with, “Well, it depends. . . .” And they’re not just covering their @$$-S. That is to say, they are covering their @$$-s, but that’s not all they’re doing. More and more, part of what seems to be behind this waffling is an increasingly popular notion that whitetail bucks are individuals with individual—brace yourself—personalities.

Now, I think it’s fair to say that hunters have historically cringed at anything smacking of anthropomorphism. And the word “personality,” when applied to an animal, seems to smack pretty hard. Yet I increasingly hear it applied to big bucks by people who know big bucks best. Then I read this form The New York Times: