It's hard to say for sure.I truthfully believe the herd is smaller today than it was in 1995 when I moved there and there was no hunting allowed.The last few years,it's being timbered like crazy and there's all kinds of temporary food because of the tops.I do think the herd went down but I think it's going right back up.Most of the deer are in the areas where you can't get at them.There's 14000 acres in there and we can only hunt about 2200 of them.I honestly think we'd have to kill at least 350-400 deer a year just to keep the herd from increasing and that's a low estimate.That of course is assuming the logging continues over the next several years,which it should.The true measure is the habitat and it's not coming back.Every stumnp sprout on the property is browsed and the only regeneration is in areas where the tops are keeping the deer from getting at them.We have 8 miles of transect lines set up for doing browse impact surveys.We were doing them every yeat but as of last year we decided to do them every other year.Nothing was changing so we figured we'd get just as good data if we did it every year.So far,75% of the property had no regeneration at all.Of the regeneration present,75% of it was beech and striped maple.Beecjh is an indicator species,meaning that deer shouldn't be eating it.If they are,it's a sign that there's nothing else for them to eat.Our last browse impact survey showed that 59% of the beech was severly or moderately browsed.That's a sure sign that there's a definate habitat issue.I stared an sd card last year showing the habitat and overbrowsing.I'll finish it up this year and send it to someone that can post it.It's disturbing.

We talked about doing a helicopter count during the winter several years ago but there isn't any funding.Treasure lake is pretty much flat broke and they won't put any money into the wildlife or the habitat.Golf is much more important here.