CNC you and I are pretty much in agreement. You can factor in deer getting hit by cars on the highway and deer dying of disease or other natural causes... we lump that into a statistical analysis.

But what is completely true is that you have no control over that. You have control over your trigger and your tigger only. The plan with your rifle is to manage the deer herd for Mother Nature because she can't do it correctly? Wrong. When you shoot a deer you have added yet another external influence on their mortality rate just like an automobile on the road. However, you can only control what you have control over. And since you can't control how many will jump in front of a vehicle you have to factor that in along with what you intend to do with your rifle.

Simply - if you have a bunch of deer getting hit by cars near your property then you will have to adjust your shooting habits accordingly. A dead deer is a dead deer doesn't matter how it happened. Insurance claim Data would be the easy source for this information but that has ZERO to do with your little piece of heaven even if you could get that data by County. Which is a good example of how you can't manage on the "whole". Also... Self management isn't going to happen just like all the millions of people who broke the speed limit going to work this morning.

What Alabama's DCNR believes, still after 20+ years... is simply that you can manage on the whole AND that you also have control over everything including what you neighbor is killing 10 yards outside your property line (self management). It's completely stupid and typical of an academic theory. This is where this whole BS theory of shoot more deer have more deer falls completely apart. 90% maybe closer to 100% don't have enough property to do this. So you put in the effort and work but your neighbor doesn't... you fail. This is the biggest problem IMO and when you want to discuss people not hunting or enjoying their efforts nobody talks about these hunters.... we only discuss those that want to indiscriminately blast something and what their "rights" are and how you can't eat horns or we are going to ruin their enjoyment. Well, what about the people that want to kill something other than a 2 yo. 6 pointer? What about them? Alabama has made it nearly impossible for these people or at least put virtually nothing in their favor.

But coming back to Statistics... 100% of the time.... if you blast a deer. You will have less deer. 100% of the time.

I'm waiting on pictures of starving deer. If anyone has too many "deer" I'd sure love to see what all those starving deer looks like we need to get the State over there quick to "study" this because it doesn't exist anywhere. It's like Democrats saying there is a White Supremist behind every piece of shrubbery. Where?