Jim, I would imagine, just a guestimation on my part, that the continuing lowering breeding rates would be due to an overall younger doe age structure. Im not certain that would show a continued decline though, unless as many of us think, the reduction is also continuing. Less does as 3, 4 year olds and over can have a big effect on recruitment. And with reduction you are gonna have less and less of them percentagewise in the herd. Just as with the buck, if you increase the harvest rate, there are less older buck.

As to the effect, I think them obvious. Less deer. Less deer harvested. But not so much is that my concern as it is the fact that the plan was supposed to be guided by herd health and habitat health. My concern is with both showing at best erratic results, how "scientific" can it be and what does it mean to our deer herd and hunting if its not.

If the herd health isnt showing what it should be showing after all this reduction why are we doing it to the extent we are? also, if we were to follow this program , by taking that reproduction issue at face value...it would equate to even FEWER deer!

Also, the regeneration issue...How do we gauge deer impact...if regeneration is so fickle as not to bea reliable indicator of acceptable deer levels with other factors at play and cannot be dictated by science, but a mere "judgement call" about what else among other known factors as well as unknown may be the cause?