[[b]Contractor, it's not much different in the east end of the state, but if you spend as much time in the woods as you claim to then you should notice the effects of overbrowsing. Take a walk in the woods in early spring and look for oak saplings. The squirrels have been planting acorn (what there are of them) all fall but you won't find any. They become deer salad before they get a foot tall. The forrests need time to regenerate. Where I hunted 30 years ago was a good mix of oak, maple, beech, ash, cherry and poplar trees. I can take you into the same area today and most of the oaks have died off, and all I see now is Maples and a few Cherrys . Deer don't eat maples and they produce no mast for wildlife. I say we give it a couple more years before we start complaining.


I have noticed that oaks did not sprout in those drought yrs of late 90s. Now with recent rains they are everywhere! On some of my MD farms we have 50 deer PSM. and the forest is not overbroused. We have been amazed by the carrying capacity of the land. With soybean, corn, wheat, hay, even some clover plots. But what helps the most is over grown abandoned fields with multiflor roses and honeysuckle. They do well there all winter. But the mountains away from fields is very different. However the 5-10 psm on PGC lands is wrong.. I live close to a few test browse fenced areas and there are so few deer there is no difference inside and out. I suppose when the indians were here and whitetail and elk pops were very high the forest were destroyed? There was little farming and even fields back then, just forest mostly pine.