OK from those two statements, the adult bucks that survived IN THE CAPTURE AREA increased in 6.5 times. Now the if the 04 bb numbers are only twice what the adult buck numbers are that means the sheer number only went down from 30 bbs per 2 adult bucks to 26 per 13 adult bucks.
Sounds good to me!
There is simply no way you can reach that conclusion based on the data provided. You have no way of knowing how much the adult buck population increased or how much the BB population decreased.
But here is a honest and accurate assessment of Alt's plan,whose primary goal was to reduce the OWDD.. The OWDD increased from 959K in 1999 to 1.130M in 2003. So even though Alt increased the length of the anterless season by 250 % while increasing the anterless alllocations to over 1 M. , herd reduction was still a miserable failure.
At the same time Alt said that there would be more and bigger bucks than we have ever seen before in PA. but, the buck harvest decreased to harvest levels last seen in in 1985 when 136k buck were harvested. So while HR was a miserable failure , reducing the buck harvest was grand success.
BTW, the goal for 5C ,where we hunt, is 6 DPSM. We harvested 7 deer on .05 SM ,so we are doing excatly what Alt wanted us to do. If and when we reach the goal of 6 DPSM, our harvest last year will be twice the harvest for an entire SM in 5 C. If that happens 6 hunters will quit hunting in PA.