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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Retired Educator" data-source="post: 116503" data-attributes="member: 3373">I don't believe it was totally weather, but combined with loss of habitat that accounted for a huge loss of deer for a couple of years. In my opinion far more than the 140K licenses sold by G&F. I happen to know several landowners in a pretty big block of land that were very fussy about who was allowed to hunt on their land and what kind of deer was allowed to be shot. Deer were plentiful on these farms, habitat was good, (lots of CRP) and harvest limited by landowners, not G&F. The kind of hunting that pissed the average hunter who wasn't allowed on the property off. How's the population today? Down like much of the rest of the state.What caused the loss of deer on this property, CRP coming out, a few extremely cold winter with lots of snow and a very late spring. I think I'm pretty safe in saying that no more than 10-15% of the deer were harvested on this property each year and now there's not 1/3 of the deer there used to be.You can blame farmers for taking land out of CRP but farmers are businessmen(women). Their goal is to operate at a profit. When CRP was originally put into the program the payment/acre varied around the state but I'm pretty sure it wasn't uncommon for payments in the $35-$40/acre area. 10-15 years later when the land was eligible to come out wheat was worth $10+/bushel, corn $8+/bushel, canola $10+/bushel. In many areas it was possible to have a profit well above the price received per acre for CRP. Even cash rent for those who no longer farmed the land was much higher than the CRP payment. So what would you have done? Farm at a loss so everyone else can have great deer-hunting?In my opinion the loss of CRP is the single biggest reason for the state's loss of deer and other game animals. And that was entirely a federal program, not a state program. The purpose of the CRP program was to take land out of production to increase the price of commodities, therefore reducing the cost of subsidies to producers. Subsidies can be viewed as good or bad dependent on your viewpoint but without a doubt the subsidies to pay for CRP were the single biggest reason for out great hunting during those years. And know, the loss of CRP is the single biggest reason we may never see the "good old days" again.</blockquote>

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