I'm one of the fortunate hunters whom has family farms to hunt, over 1000acres in total in 3A. We kill some awesome bucks each year. But we killed just as manyawesome bucks BEFORE Alt and his "make Pa in Iowa" scheme. What we don't see is deer innumbers like we did a few years ago.
I have several young family members whom tried hunting in the last 3 yrs and dropped out...just aren't seeing enough deer to keep them occupied. I have family that are in their 40's whom have hunted for deer on these same farms since their youth...some of them have quit as well citing lack of deer sightings as the reason.
We had for as many years as I can remember to turn family andfriends away just because there is a limit to the amount of people we could put up in our farm homes at one time. This year there were 6 of us hunting. TOTAL on 1000 acres.
We work these farms we are in these fields 365days/yr. We know the amount of deer on our land. GUESS WHAT there are darn few. Yet the PGC insists on offering way too many doe tags each year for revenue and because they are stuck in this "Altism style of deer management".
The PGC has cut off it'snose to spite it'sface! Now with less back tags being sold each year and hunter recruitment way down they are crying how they need capital to operate. Who is going to keep paying more to see less.
I support those whom say "No rate hike without results". The PGC has had several years tohave their program show results. I supported them in this,left large portions of our land unposted,etc. Heck I even purchase a general backtag even though I do not need to. But no longer!!!!!!
We've lost too many hunters over not seeing deer wether it is on public or private land. IT IS TIME TO MAKE A DRASTIC DROP IN DOE TAGS. Keep the early MZ, drop concurrent buck/doe gun season, go back to allowing JUST 1 DEER per season in WMUs with low deer numbers, allow the purchase of multiple doe tags inWMUs with high deer numbers.
IF we ran our farms like the PGC runs it's game management we'd be broke in 1 year!