It is very obvious that nature and the deer in both areas disagree with your perspective of how many deer can be supported long term.
If either area could support more deer the numbers wouldn’t have been I a state of decline.
That is pure unadulterated nonsense. In 2000 2g supported 15 OWD PSM and now it supports less than 10 OWD PSM simply because harvests exceeded recruitment. At the same time the unhunted herd in VF is at over 200 DPSM even though the habitat is overbrowsed to a much greater degree than in 2g. If hunting was banned in 2g the herd would increase to over 40DPSM with the existing habitat and it still wouldn't be at the MSY carrying capacity.