The answer is very simple.Once the habitat gets degraded to the point is in many places,it takes very few deer to keep it that way or make it even worse.Most of these areas will never have high deer densities again,even with no doe hunting unless we have several mild winters and good mast crops.Still,unless the heard is kept very low,the habitat will never start to recover.That sucks but that's what happens when you have too many deer for too long.
That claim is false and misleading. WMU 2G had almost twice as many deer in 2000 as it has today and that was after the PGC claimed the forest had been over browsed for 80 years. In the mid 90's Elk Co. had over 20 OWDPSM and now it has 8 or 9. The true MSY CC of northern hardwoods is 40 DPSM not 8 or 9. In 2004 DCNR stated 50% of the plots had adequate regeneration to replace the existing canopy while at the same time claiming the deer limited regeneration to 24% of the plots. The whole DMP was based on false and misleading info from DCNR and the PGC.