"The deer herd does cycle. What makes it cycle is not important. No place on earth that has hunting has a "steady" herd from year to year. The PA herd will be back...and it will be healthier than it was."
If they keep the tags the same and seasons....It WONT be back. And pgc doesnt want it "back" anyway.
Deer herds dont "cycle" period, though they have "fluctuated". Not the same. The only reason herd sizes have fluctuted at all is due to overhunting, underhunting or total habitat change. Truly cyclic species like snowshoe hare & ruffed grouse dont have to have those factors to have wide swings in population. On the other hand, if the overall habitat on a wide scale doesnt change in a unit and the goal is to keep a herd stable with the right allocation it wouldnt be a problem.
The only "cycling" involved with our deer herd in the last several years was due to 800K to over a million doe tags + dmap + crop damage kills...Plus a bazillion other ways, seasons and days added to kill more deer, which pgc likes to call "added opportunities". Couple that with over 900,000 hunters and it gets even more ludicrous to blame "cycling".
What makes it cycle is not important.
Ummm, yeah, Id say its VERY important to responsible management.