I was just eyeing the 07-08 annual report. I'll start with the good. Pgc has said they arent SURE that the decline in harvest in 2A was due to hunters solely avoiding the ehd area, but wanted to know if it were due to smaller herd and that this year pasts harvest would give some insight into it. Well they have their insight. Basically exact same buck harvest. Should be interesting to see if "adjustments" are made now that they have that insight.

Some things I found outrageous to say the least...So heres the ugly

according to 05 annual report, 2A had 58% regeneration. That from a high herd level from 2001 to 2004 sampling.

according to 06-07 annual report 2A from sampled plots from 2001 to 2005 samples collected had 61% regeneration. That is froma somewhat lowerherd size, and showed improvement even though it wasnt "poor" anyway previously even with much higher herd levels, only 2 years removed from 69+ dpsm!!.

In the very next annual report (lmao) with a much smaller herd,according to buck harvest as well as the herd size change chart on page 18 of the 07-08 report...and samples collected from 2003-2007 the regeneration in the 07-08 annual report is listed at 46%

Now does any sane rational man woman or child have an explanation as to why the regeneration would be 15% lower when the herd was MUCH higher,during the sampling years of 2001-2005 than they were during the last samplingused on the 07/08 reportof 2003-2007 when the deer herd was lower???

The bad? ANOTHER year of declining percentage of does bred. They also redid the past pregnancy rates! Surprise surprise. So the decline didnt look quite so bad. A percentage or two was added here or there, with the footnote at bottom saying *embryo counts and pregnancy rates adjusted to account for females that were lactating when collected in the spring. As a result of this change, these results may not agree with previous reports!

The new chart:

2000-----93%
2001-----93%
2002-----93%
2003-----93% wow looking good so far eh?
2004-----91%
2005-----92%
2006-----89%
2007-----88%

They made the decline more gradual. Yet still steady decline and 07/08 was no exception a new low.

Embryo counts? Dropped AGAIN as well.

2000-----1.60
2001-----1.58
2002-----1.63
2003-----1.59
2004-----1.53
2005-----1.51
2006-----1.54
2007-----1.50

What do they need? A brick wall to fall on them to see its not working??

LINK: http://www.pgc.state.pa.us/pgc/lib/pgc/reports/2008_wildlife/21001-07z.pdf