kinda ironic that the counties with access problems are the ones with constant or growing populations.Could it be more deer have escape routes to safe havens where hunting is limited or not allowed at all?This lets more deer alive to breed compared to say a SGL in a populated area with easy access.On the other hand elk,cameron,and clinton are loaded with public land.But those NC counties are not good examples of overharvesting compared to southern public lands.
Let's look at an area Doug is familar with,greenwood rd.This has about 6 miles of heavily posted land with the same habitat as the state forest at the end of the road.Matter of fact the state forest actually has thicker cover then the private.Yet if you spot lighted on a good night you can count over a hundred deer on the private lands and once on the state forest if you're lucky a handful.Hmmmm,you would think with the high deer numbers in the private woods the deer would eat themselves out of the house and head to the state forest land where there should be some regen because of the low deer numbers since well let's see ah since HR started.Or could this be an access problem where the deer aren't getting harvested as much?
So if does can't be overharvested and/or habitat is the main ingredient to deer populations compared to harvests I'd like to hear from some of the fellers on here who hunt posted land.I don't mean this question in a smart way because I'm sarting to hunt posted land myself but here it is,
Do you think your deer numbers would remain the same if say 15 other rifle hunters hunted doe on your hunting land?This is based on say 100-600 acres.
I can name quite a few SGL's in southern counties with low deer numbers compared to nearby posted woods where deer are plentiful.And most of those SGL's have better habitat then the private woods.
Sorry but nobody will ever convince me that access doesn't make a huge difference in deer populations and that an area can't be overharvested below what the carrying capacity would allow.