RE: 07/08 annual report. Good bad and ugly. Mostly ugly
"Just when will we have killed enough deer?"
Good point. And its vividly clear how "convenient" our "guidelines" of using habitat and herd health can be when you want it to be whatever you want it to be!!
This plan should have used a system like other states for herd levels. . But then they couldnt have reason to blatantly slaughter the herd.
The plan was designed to take herd to rediculous lows in every aspect of its makeup. Less doe=Far less deer simply for them having been removed from the herd. Less doe also =less deer recruitment. Lower doe age structure, as a side effect of the plan = lower recruitment since younger doe have less fawns.
Even though all of the above have caused both a smaller herd and loss of recruitment, we still have, in wmus like 2A HIGHER allocations than we did years ago when we were actually trying to and succeeding in reducing a larger herd, with amuch higherrecruitment rate!
Those absolutely rock bottom deer density goals,that pgc previously had intended to use immediately before going to the "goalless" system we have now, look like they may still be the goals. If that is indeed the case, the state is gonna get a helluva lot worse...and stay there.