I don't think hunters holding out, food plots, or minerals supplements has a lot to do with it. I think it's purely a numbers game. Over the last 25 years the population of deer in Ohio has exploded. Over that period ohio has remained a 1 buck state with comparatively short gun seasons and a long bow season. In ohio approximately 33% of hunters were successful. Of that 33% how many shot a buck? I don't have the numbers on my phone but let's say it's 20% of the licensed hunting population. If the deer population is high enough it doesn't matter what those 20% shoot. Plenty of deer will survive to be 2, 3, 4+ year olds. if your deer population is significantly lower people will still shoot bucks but fewer of them will remain to grow older. We can see this exact trend playing out in the OBBBC book entries. Over the past 5 years our deer population has been decimated by our DNR, OBBBC entries have followed suit. The reason that we've seen bigger deer over the past 20 years is simply because up until 5 years ago the population was growing. The opposite is holding true now that the population is reduced.