Howboutthemdawgs
5 year old buck +
You hear the stories about it being a huge deal to even lay eyes on a deer “back in the day” but I can’t understand why? I bet habitat was soo much better. First, there was simply more. Development and sprawl have erased millions of acres since then. Agriculturally we are so ridiculously efficient that hardly a kernel of corn is left after harvest. I bet fields were a buffet back then. Also fence row to fence row wasn’t a thing either so all that wonderful edge existed. Hunters would have been so less effective than today as well, theoretically allowing the population to explode. Any of us in decent deer country know that if you do not actively keep the population in check it will explode. So what kept populations artificially low back then or what is keeping them artificially high now?