There are several factors that have caused deer hunting in Vermont to decline. Loss of habitat is one of the biggest ones. I grew up in Salisbury (Addison County) and when I go back there today there are houses in more than half the places I used to hunt. Just the completion of the interstate system itself removed thousands and thousands of acres of prime deer habitat (say nothing about making the state much more accessible to people from Boston, New York, etc.). Once the interstate system was completed people from out of state started buying up property for vacation homes as it was a very short, easy drive compared to the old highway system, so the interstate impacted the deer herd in several different ways.

Then you have the coyote problem on top of the loss of habitat. It's difficult to say how many deer a pack of coyotes kill during the course of a year but I think it's fair to say they take quite a few.

Winters have always been hard in Vermont...some harder than others and that's a cyclic thing that really shouldn't affect a deer herd over the long haul. Here in Montana we have blue tongue hit every few years. Ithit here about 5 years ago and the F&G estimated it wiped out 70% of the whitetails in the area I hunt. You would never know it today....our numbers are back to pretty much what they were 5 years ago.

Vermont hunters are different, as a previous post mentioned, but they are different for a reason. All they have ever known is shooting the first legal buck they see because it's rare to see more than one or two legal bucks in a season (and many times none!). Yes, they enjoy the meat but when that's all you have that's what you take. And don't kid yourself......there's not a hunter in Vermont who doesn't dream of shooting a buck with a big rack. If a person could shoot any deer they wanted to, put a big fat doe next to an old run down buck with a rocking chair rack but tastes like shoe leather and I'll guarantee you there isn't a hunter in Vermont who would pass up the buck and shoot the doe. As far as the comradarie goes, yes that's a big part of hunting for sure but walk into any deer camp where they haven't killed a buck (or even seen one)after a week of hard hunting and tell me how happy the follks are there.....you'll hear a lot of grumbling and complaining.

The bottom line is that the vast majority of hunters would like to shoot a mature buck, but most will not agree to what it takes for that to happen. We live in a "I want it right now" society.....we don't want to wait for anything and managing a deer herd that has never really been managed is going to take some time.