hoping to cash,
Please don't miss my intended point. I am not always in agreement with the management polices of the ODNR, but I am fully aware of the difficult job that they have to managing all of the wildlife resources and balancing for the needs of all vested interests.
They, through their evaluation process determined that the deer population needed to be reduced. They never hid that population management plan, they openly promoted the harvest of many more deer statewide to reduce the population through public announcements, increased bag limits and reduced tag pricing. The intent was loud and clear.
They certainly tried to sell the benefit of less deer to hunters as beneficial to the deer itself. Charts and graphs with deer densities, how antler size was declining, over browsing, etc, etc, etc. I am sure what they presented was factual but feel it was oversold to the hunting community to create enthusiasm for the task ahead, which was killing more deer, lots of more deer.
The problem arises, and also creates a huge challenge to the ODNR is how to evenly reduce a deer herd that is not evenly distributed across the state. They can't, which leads to different reductions in different areas even different areas withing the same county. Their changes in the bag limits and managing now more by county versus by huge zones should show that they are no managing the results of the initial statewide mass reduction they set out to achieve.
I am not trying to be overly critical of a hunter that killed a bunch of deer during the times of high population and increased opportunity if they believed they were doing it for all of the right reasons that the ODNR laid out to them. However If the ODNR tells you there are too many deer on the property you hunt I think the hunter can make a more informed assessment than the ODNR and manage their deer harvest accordingly.
My single biggest problem isn't the hunter participation in the herd reduction plan it is the attempt by these same hunters to now lay total responsibility and accountability on anyone but themselves for the current status of their local deer population (EHD aside, that is all on to itself a different problem). Many say they didn't know what they were doing, they were mislead by the ODNR. I say that would serve to illistrate either a blatant lack of understanding of the resource or a less than honest position. When someone states that on public lands "brown it's down" on our private lands "more selective" has a problem selling to me that their efforts were a result of the ODNR plan. The ODNR never said the population is way too high on public lands, kill more, but not as many on private properties.
Again, The ODNR clearly stated their goals, hunters gleefully participated, the reduction has occurred, recent regulation change is in place to manage the reduced population, hunters are going to see less deer today as a whole than previously. Going forward only hunters, not the ODNR(minus a closed season), can have any impact of the future of their local deer populations, higher or lower.
I'm sure you are a really nice guy so please forgive my frustration towards those that continue to blame the ODNR. I just can't get there and have trouble understanding those that do.