Whew Atlas, I'm glad you finally got to me, I was feeling left out
ok this is going to be long
Physical appearence and overall survival rates are about as good of an indicator as you are gonna find..............sure beats some clown telling me a deer is "healthy" because he scores 150 +
No one is telling you that, but that is all you hear. An individual deer can be fine and well fed, but the health of the overall herd could be in severe jeopardy due to overbrowsing and you end up with a crash like Germ has shown. Also something to look at is fawn recruitment rates, something PA is studying hard. Healthy deer in a good habitat produce a lot of fawns.(per deer)A lot of deer in a poor habitat don't. (per deer)
There is and will never be anything normal about deer biology as long as humans exist............we influence them in so many ways it would be hard to count them all.............to yearn for a "natural" deer herd would be a pretty hypocritical stance to take considering all we have and will continue to do to throw a monkey wrench into those gears. IMO
That's why I said later that we have the ability to restrict harvests and match up the populations with the habitat, so that our impacts can still leave a healthy more balanced herd.
Who gets to define "natural"???
The biologists, and the deer. Biologists research natural deer herds and then translate the numbers into bag limits etc.
No they're not...............it's when they try to force everyone else to do it as well that their colors show. Do what you want........and leave other guys alone to do what they want. You see a lack of restraint.........I see an expression of free will.
Carefull going down that road. Someone jacklighting deer may argue thier expression of "free will".
bawana's quote
Some thing elseis how guilty some of you feel about the shape of the deer herds in your area. You all say listen to the biologist but aren't they the very ones that have been wrong so many times in the past.
No, the biologists hands were tied because of the pressure put on them by hunters wanting lots of targets of opportunity. Only recently have some had the nads to tell the hunters they were wrong.