Iagree with you about Gary Alt.

DCNRknows what'shappening on their land better than the PGC does.They have more forester and biologists out in the field than the PGC does.I'm suredmap was abused in certain areas of the state but that isn't the case in every district.I live in district 9 and the district forester is a very good friend of mine.Two seasons ago they considered expanding dmap to other areas of the state forests herebut decided not to in the end because they started to see favorable regeneration in these areas.People can keep beating this to death but the habitat was terrible on the state forests around here.The only regeneration occuring around here was in an area that got leveled by a tornado in 1985.The herd exploded there and after about 12-15 years it turned into pole timber and the deer started to disapear somewhat.Unfortunately the huge herd completely devistated the surrouning forest and now the understory is nothing but ferns.We had two back to back winters in 2003 and 2004.The mast crop was minimal those years and there was very little if any preffered browse.Take a look around these state forests some time.One deer needs to eat about 5 lbs of browse a day to survive a hard winter.Multiply that by 60-90 days and the number of deer present.Once you do this,it's easy to see how even a small herd can ruin the habitat when the habitat is already stressed.When you have little browse and a heavy snow cover,what do you expect the deer to eat?Alot of deer died those yearsand fawn recruitment went way down.Once a doe loses 25% of her body weight,she will most likely either abort the fetus and reabsorb it into her systen or the fawn will die from malnutrition shortly after birth.These effects take a year or two to show up in the herd and that's what we're seeing now in this part of the state.This is habitat related and the worst thing we can do is to let the herd rebound before the habitat can be fixed.We had too many deer for way too long.It's as simple as that and now we have to pay the price with lower deer numbers.