BT, my point was that you can't honestly draw any conclusion about what direction the herd is going from those numbers. To assume any direction, you have to put some faith in those numbers. It's pretty obvious that they are way off the mark, and are not even a little bit credible. If you want to believe what they tell you about the direction the herd is going regarding male deer, you also have to put the same amount of faith in what they tell you about the female segment of the population. I just have a hard time believing the over 5 million deer in 2001, and killing nearly 4 million in two seasons part. And unless you are willing to stand behind that part of the study, you can't put any faith in the other part of those numbers. This is really no evidence that the plan is working, but more like evidence that they need to re-evaluate how they collect data.

That study area must be a large lease where they decided to only shoot does one year and leave all the bucks, or it could be a place where the farmer whacked all the does on a crop damage permit, who knows. What we do know from these numbers is that they are not credible for use througout the state, and therfore cannot be used as evidence that Alt's plan is working.

Without check stations, you may never have reliable data that indicates whether it's working or not.