Culling Inferior Bucks Creates “Monsters”
The vast majority of antler deformities are the result of injuries, not genetics. When a buck suffers an injury, it can impact antler grown for multiple years depending on the injury and severity. Thus, culling bucks with undesirable racks is dicey at best.
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Another downside to culling is the fact that some bucks will sire 3 fawns per year, while others will sire 3 in their lifetime. The future impact of taking one buck out of a herd is negligible. This is magnified by the fact that desirable antlers aren’t a great predictor of breeding success.
The second part of this equation is, of course, does. While they don’t have antlers, they do contribute every bit as much to the genetics of your herd and therefore your antlers. As far as we know, there’s no way to accurately determine whether a doe is carrying superior or inferior antler genetics.
