The biologist are all going to say you are only seeing 10% of the deer. I’ve heard that line before. Put 6 cameras on 400 acres and see how many deer you get pictures of.
I have a unique situation relative to the place I hunt, and it makes everyone think we have more deer than we do. Most of my hunting is on a 25,000 acre military base, and that land is gridded with a road system. It is sectioned off into what they call "areas" (training areas), each of which averages probably 200 acres (I really have no clue, that's just my guess). And even within each area there's a decent system of woods roads, so it's easy to access all of it, and a lot of it is open enough to have good visibility. My point is it's easy to SEE deer, they don't have anywhere to go. Also, there may be 7 or 8 guys hunting at the same time within that area, so the deer are getting jumped, or they're slipping out from all the activity. So the unthoughtful conclusion is that "boy we are loaded with deer, we need to shoot some does!!!" NO WE DON'T!!! They think there ARE a lot of deer because they're SEEING a number of deer, but I believe you're seeing most/all the deer in that area many times!! It's not as many as you think!! It's not like there were 40 deer in that area and you saw 10 of them...you possibly saw all 10 deer in that area, bruh!!!
The measure of deer density isn't based on sightings to me, but rather it's based on sign. If you have a lot of deer, you have a LOT of sign, and the reality is there are several of those areas on this military base that just have a "meh" amount of sign.
I think most folks don't realize how easy it is to seriously damage your herd, how quickly you can decimate them to a point that the hunting experience is just lousy.
