Lets say your doe harvest increases over time from running in the 400-500 range up to the 800-900 range and it stays running at that level for several years…..and most of the hunters are reporting seeing a lot more deer…..You could associate that with a likely increase in overall population as that harvest proves to be sustainable over time…….In other words, you have a larger population that is able to support the increased harvest
However, if the doe harvest rapidly climbs suddenly…..is then followed by a drop in harvest and a report from hunters of seeing less deer…….then there’s likely a good chance that you just lowered the base deer population in the area……In other words, the herd couldn’t sustain that increase in doe harvest and the ensuing decrease in harvest is due to less deer…..A lot of these counties I'm posting up were already hitting what were probably going to be peaks in a decade long doe harvest trend line........ likely coming from folks trying to “balance ratios” following years of excess buck killing…..They definitely didn’t need a bag limit change to push those peaks a little higher before crashing…..I doubt all of those increases that were already occurring were coming from sustainable population growth
Last edited by CNC; 11/10/25 01:39 PM.
