Agreed, and the key point that most locals don't want to hear is that it's too many deer for the carrying capacity of the land up there. When you get down to it, the land can only support so many deer, and when you have little habitat management (e.g. farming or timber harvesting) combined with hard winters, you can't have as many deer per square mile as you do in more temperate croplands like Iowa, etc. So if the land can only carry X deer per square mile, and the ratio of does just keeps increasing, naturally you're going to see fewer and fewer quality bucks. The few bucks that are there have so much hunting pressure on them that they often get taken when really young.

Personally, I'd settle for seeing half the deer during a sit, but of better quality. You could never convince most of the guys in my camp of that though...their reference for the good ol' days is back in the 60's which coincidentally is when there was more/better habitat and more does taken.

In other words, don't expect QDM or anything else to help until the deer numbers and buck-to-doe ratio are corrected. It's wildlife management 101, but the DNR (and a lot of the public) is too afraid to try something different.