Discussing science is more illuminating that politics.
http://www.wlf.louisiana.gov/sites/d...1o-01-2012.pdf
The above link is a beautiful report illustrating numerous important management principles.
1. More restrictive limits can produce counter-intuitive outcomes, and the knee jerk ignorant supposition that more regulation is better conservation is often wrong.
2. It is best policy to insist on thorough science before implementing more restrictive limits. The fundamental scientific findings in the report would have been the same had the science been performed before the limit change.
3. Habitat is the most important limiting factor in future game availability. Sporting limits can be important, but they are almost always secondary to habitat.
4. Wishing for trophy animals and implementing more restrictive policies to get them involves trade offs. Careful science is needed to accurately understand these trade offs.
Hopefully, both the LDWF and the sporting public in Louisiana will learn from this mistake and be more inclined to demand the science up front before passing more restrictive regulations rather than afterward when the restrictive regulations have a negative impact on the resource and on the sportsmen and women that enjoy the resource.
A key point in the report is:
Novinger (1984) listed the qualitative criteria for minimum length limits as waters exhibiting the following conditions: 1) high fishing mortality, 2) low recruitment, 3) fast growth, and 4) low natural mortality.
These same criteria can be evaluated for specks and an analogous set of criteria can be considered when weighing antler restrictions and other big buck strategies.