"This is the biggest deer of my life." How many time have you said those words? If you are like most of us you've only made that statement two or three times. The first buck a hunter harvests is automatically his first personal record (PR). By using a little math we can divide hunters into three categories.
The Math of Record Setting
To calculate how many new records you can expect to set we can use the concept of expected value. For a random sample, the probability of setting a record on your first buck is 1/1. Because we have randomness the second buck has a 1/2 chance of being the biggest. The third has a 1/3 chance, 1/4 for the fourth and so on. Say we assign a "payoff" of $1 for each personal record set. If we do this we can calculate the expected value by summing the products of $1 payoffs and each of the respective probabilities. It looks like this,  where a is the number of bucks harvested. We sum this series for the number of bucks we have harvested and we get a mathematical expectation of how many personal records we should expect to set. Some notable calculations are shown. |
Type-1
Consider yourself a type-1 hunter if you have set two or fewer personal records after ten bucks harvested. Whereas mathematically, you would expect three PR's after that many events. My brother-in-law fits this category. It is not because he is a bad hunter but because of his first buck. His first buck was an Iowa freak of nature with headgear that looked like a swing set. If you set the bar that high that early, it will take a long time before setting a new PR. Imagine if Uasin Bolt ran the 100 meter dash in the ancient Olympics. He would have set a standard so out of sync with his contemporaries that after a few hundred years, humanity would have long grown weary of a quest for a new world record. The only hope is that runners would compete because they enjoy the personal challenge and the experience. This is the situation of type-1 hunters. I doubt Milo Hansen grabs his rifle each November expecting to shoot the next world record. Type-1 hunters, enjoy your season but don't hold your breath for a new PR.
Type-2
A type-2 hunter has set a PR four or more times in their hunting career. This can happen by sheer numbers. The math indicates that it would take 31 randomly harvested bucks to expect four PR's. If you set four PR at a faster pace than that, it is probably because you are not randomly harvesting deer. These type of hunters practice a managed hunting strategy that is focused on taking trophy deer. To achieve a mathematical expectation of 5 PR it would require 83 bucks. Not many of us reach those kind of numbers. But there are hunters who set five PR's. They likely set a standard for themselves that only allows them to take bucks near or above their current PR. If they are doing this they certainly aren't harvesting 83 bucks in their hunting career because they are letting a lot of deer walk.
Type-3
Then there is the rest of us. We hunt for the experience, the camaraderie and the freezer. Our experience closely fits the statistics. After our first four or five bucks, we've set two PR's. By the tenth buck we set our 3rd PR. It could be that in our beginning years hunting, we took a couple spikes. My first buck with a bow was a fork horn six-pointer and it remains one of my proudest hunting moments. As we get a few deer under our belt we can start to let the spikes walk. But generally speaking, we shoot the first legal, delicious deer that presents an ethical shot. This makes the deer we harvest effectively random. And so our situation fits the mathematical expectation nicely.
So what does this mean for you as you head to the deer stand this fall? First, identify which type of hunter you are. If you are satisfied, go out and keep enjoying yourself. If you are a type-3 hunter and want to make the transition to type-2, your hunting needs a paradigm shift. Suggesting the wholesale slaughter of deer, so that you can slant the odds in your favor is ridiculous. So, it really takes a concerted effort in habitat and herd management that may or may not be practical for your hunting situation. If you are a type-1 hunter and you have already killed the biggest beast in the woods, you will have a hard time finding sympathy. You can do all the habitat improvement and QDM you like and depending on how high the bar has already been set, you might get lucky. Or you might not. So your focus should be the experience (as it should be for all of us).
In statistics it is important to consider the possibility of outliers so let's not leave them out here. Maybe a member of a TV pro-staff gets sent to 10 states each year for ten trophy hunts. The number of bucks they kill and the number of PR's that they have set, have no reason to match ours. It doesn't take a statistician to tell you that something is different there, as we sit and watch them from the couch.
-KF
-KF
No comments:
Post a Comment