“Messaging” goes a long ways…..especially when its coming from state biologists. I think all the messaging that went along with the two a day rule change on does was probably more impactful than the rule itself. That was part of my thinking with the changes I suggested in the season dates concerning doe harvesting. A slight change in the structure to go along with some new messaging that “Hey, there’s a lot of places where you might want to think about not shooting any does for a few years. Coyotes + Humans is more impactful on population growth than we thought”.

Not to spoil the survey thread but if you notice the vast majority of the people killed 1 or 0 does last year. That’s kinda ugly when thinking about what would have to be done in that kind of situation in order to create any change from what we have now. That essentially is saying that if you want to see population growth then for a lot of areas that is going to mean shooting virtually zero does.

Yotes are playing a much larger role today in moderating population growth than they were 20-30 years ago. The combination of humans and coyotes is likely keeping there from being any growth ever occurring in many areas. There’s only maintain……slow decline…..maintain…….slow decline…..maintain………A lot of places could use some “growth” thrown back in the mix. I guess you could say that density dependent factors are not playing a role in controlling populations. That’s certainly not everywhere but the places with "burgeoning" herds are the exception and not the rule