As someone from MN, who has participated in 'group tags', your reason is very poor. Sure there are fools that shoot too many deer, but it is VERY easy to limit the group so that not too many deer are shot. If the party shoots too many deer it is from them getting greedy, not because of poor regulations.
Typically how we party hunt is that one person will be all out of tags and another person will have 2 tags. We will hit the woods with each targeting exactly one deer. That way the group isn't going over limit, and everybody gets to keep hunting. It is really pretty simple.
This year with everyone only having one tag, we wouldn't be doing any party hunting unless we are hunting within visual sight of each other to know if the other hunter already filled the tag. Worried about both hunters shoot a deer at the same time after opening day? Not in MN.
I have never hunted a party tag state so take my opinion for at it is worth. But it seems to me that party tags are a way to maximize the kill which is something your state does not need.
In Ohio, you can have 1,2,3 or more tags depending on where you are. Let's say three hunters go out with two tags each. One hunter fills both tags and he is finished. Hunter #2 and 3 kill one deer each and keep hunting. Out of the two hunters that have tags left, only two people are in the field trying to fill them. They may or may not be successful.
In a party tag state, all three hunters can continue on and try to fill the remaining two tags. It seems to me that more hunters trying to fill the remaining two tags will be more likely to succeed than just two hunters. It is a simplified scenario but it leads me to believe that more hunters that can continue to hunt even when their own tags are filled leads to more dead deer.
Another simplified scenario is 10 hunters who have one tag each. Three of these hunters kill their deer every year. Three other hunters almost never kill a deer. The remaining four hunters kill a deer some years and don't some years. So in any average year, the group may kill 4-7 deer out of ten hunters. Party tags increase the likelihood that 10 deer are killed by the group every year because some guys can now kill more than one.
I don't see how this is good for a state that has problems with extremely low deer numbers. The only reason that I can see to keep this system is tradition. But a lot of traditions will not survive if there is not a huntable population of deer. From what I have read on here and the dark side, your herd is a complicated problem that will take many solutions to fix. Eliminating party tags won't fix it, but it seems to me that it would result in less dead deer in any given year. It is a step in the right direction.
Am I wrong?
