Number of hunters also declined from 334,000 to 232,000. So number of hunters declined 30%. While deer harvest went down 49%. So that leaves a 19% or a decline of 95,000 that can not be attributed to fewer hunters.
When did the all season doe blasting go into effect?? How many people stopped shooting every deer they see because of the hassle and cost of processing?? How many leases went to self imposed limits because they were not seeing 30 does on the foodplots anymore?? How much property has been taken off the hunting market because of development or incorporation?? Are there fewer man-days being hunted
on private lands?? Are there more or less man-days being hunted on the public lands? Have more restrictions been placed on number of deer that can be harvested,
3 buck rule comes to mind? In the highest figure of kills, how many were bucks, how many were does? If there was a high number of does killed and they are no being
killed now and the number of bucks went down from one a day to 3 per season, wouldn't that reduce the number of deer killed?? If there are fewer hunters in the
woods there is more space for the deer to be without being seen, which one would think would cause less deer to be shot.
Numbers don't mean squat if there is no information regarding the variables to back up the OPINIONS.
I know how we can find out what the "real numbers are", all the State has to do is
FORCE all hunters under penalty of law to register their deer, yeah, that's the ticket (figuratively and literally)!!
Looks like a person would have a lot of homework to do before they could form an
opinion regarding the harvest numbers Statewide.
