Without reading the entire thread, I'll give this tidbit of personal experience from a Texas ranch.

A buddy of mine had a great ranch in West Texas. It was only about 500 acres and a small creek flowed a 1/4 mile off his property. This area because it was the only location around that had any ttype of cover than mesquite thickets was the primary bedding area. We had to catch the deer coming through his mesquite thickets to eat in the crop fields on his property, this was very difficult.

So, long story short... we "created" a bedding area. With the use of a bull dozer and chain saws, we cut a mesquite about 3/4 the way through and push it over.We did this in an area that was around the only other water source than the creek, if you can imagine a C shape around a pond, this is what it looked like. It was only about 75 yards deep and the total length of the C, was about 200 yards. This area grew up extremely thick in a couple of years and now beds a lot of deer. There are still deer that bed at the creek, but this is a property that never "held" deer and it does now.

Granted, this didn't increase the population, but it did increase the number of deer that stayed on the property.