Poor uneducated individuals like you have been making that claim for years. The deer have proven 12 out of 12 of your predictions have been wrong yet you continue to claim you are right.

I'm hoping it was just lack of sleep that cause this post.

Yes,doubling the food supply would put the deer herd in line with the habitat.You do need some more sleep.Yep,the

The deer were in line with the habitat when there was twice as many deer in 2G as there are today. What we have today is an over abundance of food and a lack of abundance of deer. The MSY CC of northern hardwoods is 40 DPSM not 8 DPSM.

Ok,then is your infinite wisdom,how could the health of the herd have gotten worse?

The health of the herd in 2G didn't get any worse than before, It is the average productivity for the entire state that got worse,

"Ok,then is your infinite wisdom,how could the health of the herd have gotten worse? "

Doug, the data shows what it shows. It doesnt matter one lick if the health has declined or the data doesnt accurately represent the herd health due to other contributing factors....

Either way after several years now, the data does not support the continuance of the plans extremes. If reproduction is our herd health measuring stick, and we cannot judge it accurately due to change of age structure or doesnt matter, whatever else....Then the reduction as far as herd health goes is based on absolutely nothing since we cannot quantify any gains after several years already. The only other possibility is that indeed herd health had slightly declined which would also point to a failed program. Which do you believe? Pick your poison.

Oh, so you are try to claim then that the deer numbers in the northern tier traditional deer range are just as high as they ever were?

I’ve already posted the data showing how hunters have harvested fewer deer, not more deer as you claim, in unit 2G so either there are more deer in unit 2G then ever before or something other then hunting reduced their numbers.

Since it obviously wasn’t hunters harvesting them, as the harvests prove, that reduced the numbers over the past twenty years how do you want to explain the decline if it isn’t because the habitat couldn’t support more deer?

The plain and simple fact of the matter is that the deer and their habitat have repeatedly proved that your rants and ramblings about the number of deer the habitat should or even could support, for more then short term periods, simply isn’t realistic, practical or even possible.

You need to face the fact that you really don’t know much about the deer/habitat relationship or how each affect the other. You need to spend your time learning about the subject instead of trying to educate people about things you know nothing about.

R.S. Bodenhorn

Obviously the deer themselves disagree with how many deer you think there should be. If they agreed with you their numbers wouldn’t have been on nearly a stead decline over the past twenty years or have crashed following a couple of hard winters.

R.S. Bodenhorn

Since deer are managed by unit data instead of statewide data it really doesn’t mater what the statewide data might be.

The fact is the deer management program is more reflective of reality today then it has ever been in the past. That will result in better deer management for the future as long as the professionals can use the data coming from the deer and their food supplies to guide the management objectives in the future.

The more uneducated hunters and politicians interfere though the longer it will take and the less likely we are to ever having the best deer management possible.

R.S. Bodenhorn