I wonder if some of the reason why people aren't seeing as many deer is that many hunting parties don't do drives anymore, especially on opening day? I think back a few years and when our neighbors and ourselves were doing drives, deer would be running from one place to another. Sure I would see 40 deer, but I think many of them were the same deer more than once.
There is now a fear that deer will get driven onto a neighbor's land, giving them the chance to shoot "Bucky", so we sit. I now see about the same # of deer with my gun as I do/would with my bow. Fewer deer, but they aren't scared out of their wits. That doesn't mean that the deer population is down though. Granted, our neighbors and us never went crazy shooting 4,5,6 doe each for the past 5 years, we used restraint and shot some doe, but not all of them. I know that isn't the case in many parts of the state.