The reason for this is that Wyoming county has no state forests
Doug ever hear of SGL 56???????????????? The entire south west corner of wyoming county is SGL's??????
I dont hunt this area either(Wyoming county) I only live here. Yes I spot light every day during the fall and I dont see 100 deer in any field up here as you say???? Maybe 15 years ago there was but not now. I am lucky to see 50 in an hour spotlighting. And I spotlight around Lake Carey and out by Camp St Andrew, Lemon area etc.
I hunt in Bradford county adjacent to SGL 36. Yes, I have some land but 236 acres is really too small to do anything as far as QDM. Yes, I can control the # of doe and buck (somewhat) taken on my property. (This year we took 12 doe and 1 buck) But its hard for me to practise QDM on my property when the land adjacent to me (3000 acres) does not doe hunt!!! (they killed 17 buck this year and 1 doe that a kid shot , I did not believe it till I saw the Pics...they killed some awesome bucks!!) Would Love for them to shoot the crap out of the doe but its not going to happen.
But yes the deer numbers are down from what they were 10 years ago and in my opinion could be reduced a little further as well.
As far as your quote "we will never see big bucks as Alt claims" I beg to differ on that one with ya. In the area that we hunt ,which is very mountainous you would drive around and see spikes and 4 points hanging on the meat poles of various camps around the area before AR. Now you see 8's and 10's and some dandys among those as well. Why is that...Cause now they are a year or two older. Before they got in the freezer b4 they could grow up a little.
People are too quick to forget also that the older a buck gets the smarter he becomes. In my opinion there will be ALOT more of these bucks around as AR goes on. (I saw alot of these bucks during archery season during the rut and 0 in rifle season....where do they all go??? Did they suddently get exterminated...NO ) I know they are out there hiding from all the hunting pressure/nocturnal and they will be around next year even bigger and smarter. CANT WAIT!!
Are you by chance a member of the USP??