Some of your predictions did come to pass but certainly not all of them and the ones that did come true were only because the back to back harsh winters caused the deer herd to crash in several areas of the state.
No, all of my predictions came true while you were batting zero and the harsh winters were not the reason my predictions came true. The goal was to reduce the herd by 50% and that is what I used to formulate my predictions.
You got the first sentence correct but then you ended up blowing it from that point on. Though it is uncertain just how much more the deer mortality was then recruitment in some of the poor habitat areas of the state it was very obvious that the recruitment was not keeping up with the mortality. Hunters in unit 2G have harvested and average of only four deer per square mile for the past five years.
You truly are amazing. Apparently you don't even realize that the PGC is responsible for controlling the harvested based on recruitment, instead of the deer increasing recruitment to make up for increased harvests due to high anterless allocations.
The unit that includes the city streets of Pittsburgh has averaged over fourteen deer harvested per square mile during the past five years. How can the recruitment keep up there at those harvests while in unit 2G the harvests have never been higher then eight total deer per square mile for more then a few years out the past twenty? Why is they can sustain deer harvests on our city street that two to five times as high as out remote forested areas consistently year after year for over fifteen years if it isn’t habitat related?
Simply because the harvests didn't exceed recruitment and in many cases were less than recruitment so the herd increased.
Your arguments that high harvests reduced the big woods deer populations don’t make sense because that contention simply isn’t supported by the facts and you claiming other wise isn’t going to change those facts
Once again you are contradicting the experts from the PGC that stated the goal of the increased antlerless harvests was to reduce the herd and that data you and the PGC provided shows that is what happened. But, since it doesn't fit your agenda and you can't overcome your bias , you have to blame the weather for reducing the herd.
The only place Doctor Alt failed was by not starting this deer management program ten years earlier. If he had we would have a lot more deer today in these habitat damaged areas that presently have few deer. Hopefully the professionals can keep the present deer management program in tact and on track into the future so we don’t end up with even more areas of damaged habitat and naturally declining deer populations.
Herd reduction began in 1988 when bonus tags and increased allocation reduced the herd by 15% and I provided the quote that proved that was true. Furthermore, there was no significant increase in the herd from 1988 through 1998. From 2000 to 2007 harvests that exceeded recruitment reduced our herd by over 600,000 deer and none of that reduction was due to poor habitat or harsh winters.