The History of Quality Deer Management

Where and When Did QDM Originate?

Texas is the formal birthplace of QDM. Beginning in the late 1960s, wildlife biologists Al Brothers and Murphy Ray Jr. began formalizing their novel ideas on deer management, which they outlined in their 1975 book, Producing Quality Whitetails.

The QDM movement gained momentum in Texas during the 1970s, but was slow to spread to other parts of the whitetail's range. The idea was brought to the Southeast in the late 1970s and slowly gained acceptance, initially from large private landowners and timber companies.

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, QDM gained popularity throughout other portions of the whitetail's range. By the year 2000, dozens of states and thousands of hunters had implemented QDM restrictions on millions of acres of private and public lands across the United States. Without question, QDM is rapidly becoming accepted as the most desirable and biologically sound deer management approach for today's whitetail herds.