Ghost wrote:We were working towards population control. I'd fill 15 doe tags a year as we had too many. We counted 86 in a 50 acre field of ours. Drive down the road near where I grew up and you'd easily count a couple hundred deer at dusk. Many years I'd leave my buck tag empty though, by choice.
We're the other way around. Neighbors see 15 deer in a field at dusk and think the herd needs management, but what they don't account for is the fact there's 40 hunters in the woods and if 50% are successful we have no deer left.
DNR manages us for 6 deer per square mile when the habitat could easily sustain 4x that (and has 4x that many hunters in it come November), then the neighbors say they'll shoot the does to hopefully get a shot at a trophy when there's no trophies being grown because everyone else shoots the first deer they can for fear of never seeing another deer - but yet we need to manage them because there's too many when they see 15 at a crack.
If I get my bear, I might skip deer season. Hunters Choice my ass!