herdhunter you mentioned not seeing many hunters on gamelands after the first couple of days of rifle and very few on either Saturdays. What you did not mention is how many did you see on there blasting does in early MZ and archery seasons?
Was a time when you got 1 deer a year no matter what and that was IF you were lucky to draw a doe tag. hunbters went out in archery then waited to rifle to hunt buck than waited to hunt doe and then waited for the post Christmas seasons to try again for that 1 deer.
Nowadays deer can be hunted 365 days a yr in some places and with improvement and season lenghts in archery gear does are harvested easier not to mention scoped inlines in early MZ season. Most anyone draws at least 2 tags if they want them for doe. All to harvest more doe PRE RUT.
could be why you're not seeing more hunters after the first 2.5 days of rifle deer
Sure there are deer left and they are hiding...you'd be too if you had hunters trying to reduce you to 'burger 12 months a year. I got snow on the ground right now on the farm. Drove around the patch this morning know how many tracks I saw???? 2 sets 1 big 1 fawn. and these were coming out of a corn field I left standing for them for feed. 5-10 yrs ago I would've seen 75 sets of tracks in that field. now tell me the PGC isn't issuing too many doe tags in 3A