Oh and as for some evidence that Alts plan is working, some just arrived at my door Monday. Here are some stats from the latest issue of Field and Stream....
Winter 2002 before AR..... 2% of deer captured for the buck study were adult bucks, BB's to adult bucks were 15 to 1 and adult does to adult bucks were 14 to 1
Winter 2004 after just 2 years of AR...... 13% of deer captured were adult bucks, BB's to adult bucks were 2 to 1 and adult does to adult bucks were 2 to 1
BT, you should rethink what this post actually means.
How can this be proof that Alt's plan is working, as you say? For this to prove anything, you would have to assign some meaning to the numbers. And you have to take the study as a whole, you can't pick and choose, saying some numbers are accurate, but other are not. If one segemnt of this is not representative of the population, than all other parts must be in question as well.
For example, in 2001, there were approximately 203,000 bucks killed, which, if we are to believe these numbers mean anything, there were 2,842,000 adult does just for those bucks killed, plus 14 adult does for every buck that was not killed. These numbers do not include male and female fawns, so a conservative estimate would put Pa's deer herd at well over 5 million animals for the 2001 season. Are you saying that there were over 5 million deer in Pa's woods that year? If you don't believe that, than you cannot believe these numbers have any value.
Also, by working through this as you would have us do to prove Alt's plan is working, we find that in 2003, there were approximately 142,000 bucks killed, and, according to your "proof" only 2 adult does for every buck. That would mean only 284,000 does for the harvested bucks. Since we don't know how many deer were spared, we'll assume only 50 percent of the adult males were killed, and therefore, another 284,000 adult does for those bucks, again, going by the data you say proves Alts plan is working.
For us to believe that these numbers prove Alt's plan is working, we must believe in the numbers first and foremost. To do that, we must believe that approximately 4 million deer were taken between the time period of 2002 to 2004, which is when the data you provided was collected.
Do you really believe that there were over 5 million deer in 2001?
Do you really believe that there were nearly 4 million deer taken between 2001 and 2003?
Do you truly believe that anyone could accomplish a doe to buck ratio reduction from 14 to 1 to 2 to 1 in just two seasons?
For you, or anyone to believe these numbers mean anything, let alone "prove" anything, you would have to believe each of those statements I just posted.
Actually, the only thing your post "proves" is that this data is more than just a little flawed. Also, if this is what Alt is using for his program, it proves his program is failing, because any study or program that misses the mark as much as this did, is a tremendous failure. It also "proves" that, if you believe this is proof of anything, you are what con artists call an easy mark, and will believe just about anything.
I'm really not trying to be confrontational with you, but to post what you did as "proof" Alt's plan is working was incredibly careless. Actually, if he is putting any faith in these numbers, it proves just the opposite, it "proves" the methods are very flawed and it "proves" they don't have a clue what is going on.
Sorry BT, but I think you shot yourself in the foot with this one.