ORIGINAL: ManySpurs
Obviously the deer themselves disagree with how many deer you think there should be. If they agreed with you their numbers wouldn’t have been on nearly a stead decline over the past twenty years or have crashed following a couple of hard winters.
Did he just say that we have a herd that has been in decline for 20 years? Is this the same herd that allowed us to set record buck harvests in 2002? And record doe harvests?
Maybe I outta lay off the Parrot Bay and stay outta the sun for the rest of the day.[
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The herd decline comment was in relation to the situation in unit 2G since that is where Bluebird was talking about. The statewide herd did set record harvests in 2002 but that was not the case for unit 2G.
Of the eight counties that make up the majority of un 2G Four of them had their highest hunter reported doe harvests between 1935 and 1939, one between 1940 and 1944, one between 1945 and 1949, one between 1965 and 1969 and one between 1990 and 1994. Collectively the highest reported doe harvest years for the counties that make up unit 2G occurred in the ten year between 1935 and 1945.
Of those same eight counties the highest reported buck harvests occurred between 1930 and 1969. Four of the counties had their highest reported buck harvests between 1965 and 1969, two between 1945 and 1949 and one each between 1930 - 1934 and 1985-1989.
Therefore, the opinion that the highest harvests occurred in recent years is incorrect. History clearly shows that unit 2G has had declining deer populations for a long, long time and that it hasn’t been hunters harvesting too many deer that has been causing the decline. It is hunters harvesting too few deer to protect that deer food that has caused the deer population decline.
R.S. Bodenhorn