Aldeer.com Forums Alabama Deer Talk Aldeer General Forum There is a segment of Alabama deer hunters

I’ve not been a fan of Gamecheck because I’ve taken classes through Forestry dealing with simple random sampling and I’ve never understood why we couldn’t keep using it. If its good enough for using on millions of dollars worth of timber then surely we can sample deer harvest with it. That’s really all we’re doing in the end anyways here. They’re getting as much of a sample as they can force folks into and then extrapolating the numbers according to how much they perceive it to be off. The mind blowing part to me has always been using the old way to then determine how far off we are…….BUT with all that said

I’ve pondered over and over about how in the hell these numbers were gonna do us any good and the only thing I’ve came with that makes sense……and I think this may be what Chuck Sykes is getting at here with saying he has the data……is that if we kill lets say 50,000 this year and 50,000 next and another 50K after that and so on so forth……then what that does tell us is that our herd is able to sustain a harvest of 50,000 annually. Even if the numbers are a third of reality….as long as the reporting compliance is generally the same from year to year without any massive swings then we can still use the trend to determine the same thing. IF harvest numbers showed a steady decline over that period then you would look at more in depth and determine if current regs are allowing too many to be killed. If numbers continue to grow year in and year out then you obviously had more that could potentially be killed and see no need in tighter restrictions…..maybe even opening up more opportunities. I’m guessing that this is how they will go about justifying opening the season earlier. They will say that we’re not currently killing more bucks than the herd can sustain or that the trends show more could actually be harvested and that will be their “biological reason” why it’s a sound to do so…..hunter satisfaction is the real reason for offering more opportunities….the data just shows….or I’m assuming it does…..that they are justified in allowing more flexibility to the hunter.

I may be off in left field of another bark with this answer but its just my best understanding of what’s taking place.