I grew up in Vermont and hunted there every year from 1990-1996. I then left the state and wasn't able to hunt it until last season. I hunted 120+ hours last season, and managed to see deer almost every day, but only 2x bucks, one of which I killed during rifle season. The hunting when I was a kid was better than it is today, but still cannot compare to what it is like in PA where I hunted for the last 10 years. The major difference as stated by others in this thread, it that the habitat cannot support many deer. To support more deer, more cropland needs to be grown, and more mature timber needs to be harvested. 90% of the woods in Vermont where I hunt is mature 75+ year old hardwoods that don't produce mast (i.e. maples). This doesn't produce any food for deer that is within reach of the deer. They need to cut a LOT of this timber to create new browsable growth in order to there to be more deer. The problem is all the liberal tree hugging hippies up there and how they cry when you cut trees down. They don't realize that the mature timber is killing the animals that inhabit the forest.