ORIGINAL: bluebird2
his table gives the ratio as 14:1 the year prior to the implementation of Dr. Alt's plan and it was like that for many many years. Wish you would get your facts straight!
After reading that link I can certainly understand why you believe I don't have my facts straight and don't know what I am talking about. However, in an attempt to show how well ARs are working the author intentionally mislead the readers of that article. The ratios he cited are the ratios of trapped deer after hunting season , rather than the adult pre-season B/D ratio. Since between 80-85 of the legal buck are harvested each year it is expected that the adult B/D ratio would be heavily skewed toward adult females. Something else to consider is the majority of the deer trapped were caught using cannon nets , so the operator that triggered the nets could influence the ratio of the deer that were caught.As I recall,from memory, 2004 was the first year of the antlered buck study and they were specifically trying to capture adult buck rather than just any deer.
Now, just so you don't think I am totally out of line ,and continue to believe the stats in the article, think about this for a minute. In 2001 we harvested around 203,000 adult buck so the preseason buck population was at least 250K. If the adult breeding population was 1:14 ,then there would have been 2,600,000 adult doe and an equal number of fawns ,for a total preseason population of around 5,450,000, instead of the 1.37 M the PGC claimed we had in 2001.
Wrong again. Your conclusion regarding the deer numbers in 2001 are simply wrong because they are based on an incorrect assumption.
2001 was the one year thatthe last day of "buck" season became a one day concurrent season followed by the traditional three day doe season. By Gary Alts own admission, it was a big mistake adding 13% more overall in that one day to the buck harvest that year by putting many more hunters into the woods therefore the buck harvest was skewed that season