ORIGINAL: bluebird2
As RSB has pointed out, mother nature will balance populations with habitat if we don't. In 2G, We didn't and so eventually she did.
Nature had absolutely nothing to do with the decrease in deer density in 2G. The herd in 2003 and 2004 to produced enough fawns to produce a significant increase in the population and the only reason the herd didn't increase significantly is because hunters harvested as many if not more deer than were recruited each year. For you and RSB to claim that nature is controlling the herd in 2G is just plain silly when we are harvesting over 11,000 deer annually. If those deer were allowed to survive the herd would increased by over 20,000 deer in just two years.
Furthermore, the very agency RSB works for claimed the herd in 2G increased by 40% in just one year in 2006. Can you or RSB explain how that happened?
Nature had nothing to do with it eh? How do you square that with the fact that 2G has a predator mortality for fawns that is 4 times higher than the fawns studied outside 2G ?. Hunters accounted for 3.4% of fawn mortality in 2G but 10% outside 2G. Hunters accounted for less than 15% of adult doe mortality in 2G. Hunting is not the problem. A deer population that exceeds the carrying capacity of the land is the problem. A drive through the Sproul Sate Forest reveals virtually no understory and almost nothingbut pole timber. A RSB said, deer don't eat rocks in spit of their mineral content.