I'm going to have to say that I'm not really sure how the herd is statewide. I do know that I live in an area with a lot of hunters and not much public land. In these areas there just aren't many deer. On the private land that's another thing. A good many deer but you can't hunt it. Then these property owners complain to the PGC that the deer are destroying their gardens, shrubbery, etc.
My friend and I hunted about 10 days in archery season and so far, 4 days in rifle season on public land and saw a total of6 deer (4 archery and 2 rifle). Of these,4 were doe and2 were a non-legal buck. We covered a lot of ground and made pushes for each other in areas where we normally saw deer in the past. We even tried areas we never tried before, like small brush clumps in fields that were big enough to hide a deer, just hoping we could see something worth shooting.
We'll keep plugging along. We got a week left and late ML season.