Matt and Jeremy both are doing everything they can to educate the public, IMO. I know Matt does his job and tries to stay out of the “politics” associated with his employer. I do however think the population is lower than was estimated all these years. There are pockets with a high enough density to support mass doe killings. There are other pockets where 2 does killed per 500 acres would be TOO much (guess which pocket I’m in).
We know for a fact GC is not being used by everyone. We even have some members here that brag about not participating. But I don’t know of any way to get a solid data point for how many deer are actually killed.
I’ve said it before but if the processors were REQUIRED to submit their annual numbers (buck and doe) we could get a pretty accurate count. It would probably be within 10% of the actual number.
If I was in charge this is what I would do BEFORE making any other changes to GC. And don’t tell me that’s more government regulation we don’t need. Their job is to “conserve natural resources” and 90% of the processors could spit that number out in a matter of seconds
It's not the processor's job. And requiring them to do so, could have a negative impact on their business. The last thing we need is more state government regulations on small business.
How would that have a negative impact on their business? I’ve used several processors over the years and EVERY one of them know exactly how many deer the process every year. The DCNR has to have data to do their job correctly. You can’t shoot down every thing they could or try to do in the name of no more government regulation AND gripe about what they are doing.
Having processors provide that information would have ZERO impact on their business, would not require them to do anything different and would not have any of the Hunters information attached. I run a small business and I don’t see any negative impact it could/would create.
I'm not getting into the processors giving the number or not. I'll abstain from that vote. They would have to provide buck/doe along with the county. I'm going to venture a wild guess that only 70% of deer to go a professor which is double what we are told GC is at at this point. I process my own but with that running about one a year and I won't kill one this year, I'm not going to swing the number much. Then what do we do with GC. It's here to stay. Now there will be 2 sets of numbers that could vary greatly. If GC is higher, then realization that compliance is much higher than thought and is fairly accurate. If the processor number is higher, then GC is useless, people are not using it, and will give the appearance of a disregard for game laws with no reprucussions. One would need to go but won't just to save face.
