Can anyone identify for me or summarize any reliable study re. why WT populations have increased so dramatically? Also, how much is believed to be spent on deer hunting annually? Thank you.
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Do a search in Google, Several years back I did and had great results. A term paper astounded a anti hunting friend. The they went further to see the antis have never helped.
Aside from rampant and uncontrolled development, habitat is but a fraction of what it once was. Then taking into consideration that most hunters (Marty, this is taken from the National Shooting Sports Foundation - I know you want verified statistics) are over 40 years old and there's less interest in younger people. On that, deer have become like squirrels. Fewer people hunt them and more and more deer are in limited or prohibited access areas. Now the kicker is this little graph. On a blank sheet, put an "O". That stands for a doe deer, under the "o", start a tree diagram with two limbs. On one limb put an "X" for a buck and a "O" for a doe fawn she's likely to have. Draw a line under that to represent year one of the cycle. From the original doe, bring a line down to year two and put another limb with an "x" and an "O" for her two fawns that year, but also take a line down from her first fawn doe to year two and put a branch in with and x and o for her two fawns. Draw a line across the paper for year two. Then do that scenario three more times and each doe fawn bears two of her own fawns each subsequent year. In just FIVE YEARS, that single doe has a direct blood line to 62 other deer. Thirty one of them are bucks and by year five, 2 will be shooters and 12 others will be "good bucks". All 31 of these bucks could be killed and not a single dent would be put into the heard and it would continue to multiply logarithmically. Next time you think of passing up a doe, DON'T.
use the telephone and call Gordon Whittington at "North American Whitetail" magazine. He can probably answer many of your questions off the top of his head.
I think you are going to find in many cases you are just about going to have to take the population "explosion" a state at a time. Many states did restock programs to replace extirpated populations. Contact the deer biologist(s) for each state you are interested in.
Another information source that will have tons of data in one place is the University of Michigan's Zoological Department. They will have over a half a century's worth of data on whitetail, so you might need to be pretty specific if you ask for help there.