ORIGINAL: Cornelius08
BTB that didnt answer the question.
BB, I agree completely. Its a far more complex question than it seems at first glance.
I believe it not absolutely necessary to strive for "other states" success rates,.....certainly not any one in particular.... We do have some of our own variable to consider of course. But moreso, we should strive to improve PA, compared to our present situation. We simply need to implement responsible stategies that do not cater to only one or two stakeholders that are far ouit on the extreme end, and foresake all others. Take the sport itself into at least SOME consideration, put deer where they should be in reasonable numbers, while also considering the habitat and human conflict without using them as excuses to go to completely unnecessary extremes, and the rest will work itself out. Also remember that success rate is but one factor....but yes a very important one. Quality of hunt, quality of herd, and perception of management and perhaps ohters are also factors that contribute to hunter satisfaction. With SOME increase to the herd, and responsible management, all of these would have no choice but improve, and with it, hunter satisfaction.
Putting the deer herds in balance with their habitat, as you suggest, is exactly what the Game Commission is and has been doing. Yet you are screaming about saying we need more deer.
The deer and their food supply very adequately tell the professionals how many deer are too many, and most areas are already proving they WILL NOT support more deer for long term periods and if you try to keep more for the short term periods you are doing nothing more then assuring that you will end up with even fewer deer in the long term.
The professional managers within the Game Commission have known that for many decades but they have failed at making hunters understand or accept those facts. That failure in education though, in my opinion, is the fault of the hunters instead of the efforts of the Game Commission.
The Game Commission has been trying to educate the hunters of the facts for many, many decades yet the hunters have refused the knowledge of the professionals. Wildlife management professionals started pointing out the very problems of both declining habitat and deer populations if the hunters didn’t allow higher deer harvests for about eighty years but the hunters just refused to accept it. Now they will have to live with the errors of refusing to listen to what the deer and their food supply have been telling the professionals for all of these decades.
The worst part is that there are still a lot more areas on the road to destroyed habitat and low deer numbers for the future because today’s hunters refuse to learn from the past and want to continue down the same stupid and destructive path of their fathers and grandfathers.
I know some of you can’t accept that and will say it isn’t true; so I will now go and start collecting some of the facts that support the statements I just made.
R.S. Bodenhorn