It's a simple enough concept for anyone with elementary school math skills.

The PGC calculates how many antlerless license it takes to generate a harvested deer for each WMU. RSB has posted those ratios here before

The number of tags it takes to generate a harvested deer varies between WMU's. The PGC calculates the desired harvest and simply applies the tags needed per harvest ratio to get the kill they want.

If enough guys buy tags and burn em, the harvest success rate goes down and it requires more tags to generate a dead deer. If the desired harvest in a WMU is say 15,000 and it takes 3 tags per deer killed they issue 45,000 tags (15,000 x 3) . Now if 15,000 guys buy tags and dont use em and the guys that do use em harvest 10, 000 the success rate per tag goes down to 4.5 tags per deer harvested. If the desired harvest is still at 15,000 the next year, the PGC would now have to sell 67,500 tags. (15,000 x 4.5)


Once again, you guys that buy tags just to "protect the doe" are actually contributing to higher total allocations in the long run. It's safe to assume that most of the guys who get those extra tags you helped to generate will use em so the pendulum swings the other way too. Buting doe tags to burn em may make you feel better but in the long run, you're not helping "your" cause!

Of course the PGC can always use the $$ since the mouthy minority blackmail has stalled a license increase so keep right on buying em and burning em LOL!