Not gonna speak for all Northern tier WMU's but until HR, there was virtually nothing below the browse line in the forested areas of 2F and the very small part of 2G where I hunted. Now those areas are coming back but slowly.

It's also completely meaningless to talk of what a stand of striped maple and beech can support. Few landowners will be willing to let that happen to their forest. Too many hunters forget that without the landowner, many of us will have no place to hunt. We get to hunt many of those forests simply because we are a useful in controlling the herd. That goes for public lands as well, with the exception of Game lands, of course.