ORIGINAL: Buck Magnet
Impacts of White-Tailed Deer on the Ecology of Pennsylvania - Pennsylvania's white-tailed deer population, once decimated, is now over-abundant and damaging forest ecology by destroying tree and native wildflower species and habitat for wildlife. If the deer herd is not reduced, scientists fear large tracts of Pennsylvania's forests could be lost within 100 years. Ann Murray reports. (Golden Quill Award winner for best enterprise/investigative reporting) Aired week of 05/10/2006.
This is about the biggest joke that I have seen! Honestly, the years of herd reduction have done a number and have got the numbers, at least everywhere around where I hunt, to well below the carrying capacity! Granted, 10 years ago we have a major issue and the deer were really over-numbered, but the herd reduction has fixed that problem and then some, but it just doesn't seem to stop. Its not even so much of a herd reduction as it is a slaughter of does. The buck to doe ratio was very bad, probably 15 or 20 doe to every buck, but from what I have seen scouting and my trail cameras (I have spent almost every day for the past 5 months straight in the woods, I have seen at least 3 times as many bucks as I have doe. It is so bad that we have stopped shooting doe on our properties last year. It helped out for this year, and maybe next season we will take a doe or two. My hunting properties are in prime whitetail country, TONS of food, acorns, alfalfa, clover, corn, soybeans, and cabbage fields everywhere for the deer to gorge themselves on, not a single sign of a "browse line", but yet the PGC is still claiming that we have "way too many deer". Ridiculous!
Could not agree more with you about the deer herd buck magnet