It's not a stupid rule.If you cut more than 1% a year,eventually you'll end up with too much pole timber that provides zero benefit for deer.Lets say you cut 5% a year.In 20 years all you're timber will be cut and most of it will be in the pole timber stage for the next 50+ years.That's exactly what happened to Pa.Practically the entire northcentral region was cut in the early part of the 20th century.Things were great for a while but it eventually became pole timber and then saw timber and the carrying capacity dropped.If you have an oak/hickory forest,that carrying capacity will go up a little once mast starts being produced but that's only about 40% of our land mass.

Most of the private propert that I see is cut out of greed.People want the money and realize they won't be around to see any regeneration.They high grade the timber by taking all the big seed trees and leave nothing but junk to grow.I see it happening where I live right now.Our timber rights were sold about 20 years ago and we get them back in 2013.The loggers are in there right now cutting everying bigger than 14 inches at the stump.That means that basically everything is going.We had way too many deer for way too long in this area
so there's no advanced regeneration regeneration.As a result,we're going to end up with nothing but beech and striped maple.We'll hold some deer for the next 15 years or so and then the population will crash,just like it did accross much of the northern tier.On the other hand,the game lands and state forest have long term goals to prevent this from happening.The goals for the state forests are much different but at least there's an effort to rotate our forestsso have a renewable resource.Cutting our forests in a sustaiable manner is much more complicated than just going in and clearcutting an area.