ORIGINAL: bluebird2
Smaller WMUs are not the answer. The answer is managing the herd based on the true carrying capacity of the habitat rather than the regeneration of commercially valuable trees. The MSY carrying capacity of northern hardwoods is over 40 DPSM. Even if the herd was managed at half that level ,hunting in 2F and 2G would be much better than it is now.
As I have said before I always credited you with being more intelligent then what you are displaying. I seriously don’t know if I have given you more credit then you deserve or if you are just trying to mislead people once again.
When you measure the health of the deer (the productive rates of adult does and the breeding rates for the juvenile does) you are measuring all of the habitat those deer live on, farm land, forest land or any where they feed. Therefore your claim that all habitat isn’t measured is incorrect and misleading at the least.
As for the habitat health where do you think it should be measured besides the forest? Should they measure how much corn the farmers planted? Perhaps the height of the hay fields? How about the number of shrubs planted in the housing developments of neighborhood gardens? Of course the place to measure habitat health is in the forest and I can imagine anyone with half a of a logical thought thinking otherwise. Those farm fields and neighborhood gardens are not managed to feed deer. In fact in many cases they can’t feed deer when they have two or three feet of snow covering them. In some years the only habitat that will consistently deer feed is the woody browse so that is what gets measured to determine how the deer food is fairing in the picture of habitat health.
R.S. Bodenhorn