First my opinions here are based on Pike,Scott, and Adams county because frankly I don't have enough experience with the rest.

Although most of the healthy bucks don't shed until February Ive always hated the late season. Just to close IMO.

I think its awful hard to point fingers at herd management after 2 straight years of major EHD......of course numbers are down. About every farmer/outfitter I talk to has found 10-60 deer dead from EHD. I don't remember the year but its been probably 7ish years ago we had blue tongue where I hunt and it was way worse than this.

I figure with the massive EHD kill the hunting numbers only dropping 25%......thats actually pretty good...Maybe there were to many deer?

Having said all that I'm a hunter like you guys and I want as many deer as possible BUT a place like Pike Co exist because of farming. Farming carries the whole county. While that massive deer herd is great for us hunting its not so great for the farmers.

Even now crops are just flat out destroyed. I know for the guy I hunt on having a huge deer population on his farm is about as desirable as me having a huge mouse population in my house.

The herd management is not all about us.

Back to the EHD. The 3 farms I can hunt are in the 3 different counties but all within 30 miles of each other. All 3 still have strong deer population although not like it was at one time except for the Scott county property......Its crawling with deer and heavily hunted by some relatives. I rarely hunt there for that reason but they have about 5 guys hunting 50 acres and its still loaded with deer which leads me to believe the difference is EHD hasn't hit them as hard....there is a big natural spring on the property and I suspect that is why.

I don't know enough about the rest of the state to know one way or another but we do have to remember managing this deer herd is not all based on our recreational needs/wants. Without the guy that works his but off all year farming I wouldn't have what I do. I'd say its safe to assume none of us would. We have to consider their needs more than our own wants IMO.