I agree with you atlas. I don't see how anyone can measure the health of a deer heard by weight alone without knowing the age of each and every deer they have seen.

In my hunting area they have started a herd reduction because they think they have too many deer. Now I see multiple bucks as well ranging from button bucks to absolute monsters and not only a couple. This leads me to believe that even though there are too many deer (according to wildlife officials) the numbers have no effect on sizes of antlers. All the deer I have shot were very fat so I can not see how they are not healthy.

Older mature deer become very wary and are very hard to pattern/find. So to alot of hunters it is probably easy to convince them that they don't have enough "healthy deer" when in some cases they just never see them.