More than enough deer on private lands doesn't help Joe Public, nor does it help get new hunters involved, unless you open your lands to them..

In the Catskills, the problem I'm talking about is quality, not neccesarily quanity. Personally, I'd rather take does as needed and a nick buck every 5 years than a nonstop streak of spikes & forks, and I'm sure others feel the same way. Empy handed years are acceptable to me. I understand that the trees are second growth, and it does take years to mature into full mast production. The liming/fertilizer idea sounds like a good one to me, enhance what we have. Anything to me is better than just doing the A/R programs.
In the Adirondacks however there are a few spots of untouched old growth, and deer are still far & few thruout the park, but big, due to old age.. In addition, the Beech blight wiped out alot of the mature beech tree stands, so it will be many years before a large beech mast year. The browse line along the Long Lake shoreline was like 5 feet high. That tells me that the deer are scrounging for nourishment. Deer with access to improved nutrition have been known to drop 2 fawns a cycle, greatly improving the deer numbers. Maybe a statewide analysis of the forests' nutrient defficiencies is the answer, and a nourishment program implimented.