As yet you have failed to provide any evidence or data that shows the deer herd is already reducing its own numbers. Nature only reduces deer numbers when non-hunting mortality exceeds recruitment and that is not happening in 2G or any other WMU.
Really! Over the past five years the 2G hunters have only harvested an average of 4.00 deer (both bucks and does) per square mile.
If you ask the hunters of unit 2G the vast majority of them will tell you that the deer has been reduced more the four deer per square in that unit. So, if you are saying that the recruitment hasn’t been less than the non hunting mortality are you then calling all of those 2G hunters and your USP buddies liars when they claim the deer numbers have dropped to almost nothing in 2G?
The habitat in 2B can definitely support more deer than the habitat in 2G. But the PGC experts disagreed and claimed 2B could only support 10 DPSM while 2G could support 15 DPSM.
Those were at the time the over winter deer density goals based on the amount of forested habitats within the units. That did not mean that was all of the deer the entire unit could support when all other habitats, or more specifically gardens, farm crop fields and back yard landscaping, were included.
Hunters can harvest 3 or 4 times the amount of doe as in 2G because there are 3-4 times as many OW doe,producing 3-4 times as many fawns. Furthermore, even with high antlerless allocations and high antlerless harvests the harvests in 2B did not exceed recruitment the the herd and the harvests continued to increase.
That is exactly the point. Where hunters harvest more deer they protect the habitat so it can continue to have more deer and higher deer harvests year after year and decade after decade. Meanwhile the units that harvest low numbers of deer protect the deer instead of the deer food and habitat. Eventually the habitat diminished will not support many deer or sustain even moderate deer harvests. In fact some of the worst units will not even sustain the low harvests following adverse environmental conditions. That is what nature just proved to anyone observant enough to figure out what actually is happening.
Maybe I have identified why you can't understand what is happening. You appear to be concentrating on fawn survival rather than on the effects of the harvests. Nature controls the number of fawns/doe that survive ,but the pGC controls the number of adult doe that survive hunting season and produce fawns the following year. Therefore , it is the PGC and hunters harvests that are reducing the herd in 2G ,rather than nature as you claim.
I didn’t think even you could be that goofy. Fawns recruitment is the entire deer population future. Without surviving fawn we are out of the deer business and hunters will be able to harvest no deer. PERIOD
R.S. Bodenhorn