Originally Posted by Cynical
Originally Posted by abolt300
Originally Posted by howl
Gotcha. Anyhow here's some evidence that bucks are more to blame for the spread. It's not whitetails nor is it from AL, but y'all can argue over it anyway.

"Our models predicted that harvesting 40% of adult males per year across 20 years would maintain prevalence below 5% on average, whereas if only 20% of males were harvested in each year, prevalence would increase to >30% by year 20."
https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/eap.3089

ETA: And another thing! I see GA and NC have a two buck limit and CWD? Is that right? I was hunting in SC recently and they told me they could kill five bucks per year and no restrictions. And no CWD?

Well Alabama will never have CWD then. Bama kills way more than 20% of our buck herd annually and has been doing it for the last 50 yrs. In fact, Alabama probably wipes out 30-40% of the 1-3 yr old male age classes each year. It's why our age structure and sex ratios both suck, pretty much uniformly across the entire state.

What is the current best estimate in Alabama for the percentage of buck herd killed annually by all causes? An estimate with some scientific and statistical street cred, not dude on the internet opinions?
That estimate would require the state to have valid, statistically relevant, solid, proven data from verifiable sources. So in other words, the information that you are searching for, doesnt exist. I'm sure that someone at the state could provide you with their personal estimate based on a hodge podge approach to deer management. Conversation would go like this: "Well that's a good question. There were X number of bucks checked in on Game Check, and "we think, wink wink", that we probably have around 60% participation in GC (it could be 45 or it could be 75 but we dont really know or care). Since we dont really know for sure, we assume that the 40% that are not reporting, kill bucks at the exact same rate as the 60% that do report, then we take X and divide it by what we think the percentage of hunters using GC is and that's your number. No, we dont know how to estimate rut mortality, EHD and disease mortality, and have no clue about deer and human interaction fatalities outside of Game Check. That's your number. Good luck with it. Oh yeah, we dont know what the sex ratios are either so we really dont have any idea how many bucks were in the herd to start with, before they all started getting killed. And while I'm telling the truth on things, we really dont know how many deer are in the state to start with so knowing the sex ratio doesnt even help. Hope my valuable insight answered your question."