At a advisory meeting in Bowbells years ago aftrer I asked some pointed questions about deer numbers, management and the process of determining tag numbers Randy approached me after the meeting and asked if he could educate me a bit on how the process worked.
He took out a large binder and started going thru hunter survey returns and then the following year tag determinations based on those hunter survey returns. The previous couple years we had had a fair bit of snow (one yeat shut down all travel except those main roads.
Randy pointed ot those two years and the drop in success on the handful of hunter surveys returned from our unit those years. He explained in a very "trained professional" manner that as a result of the lowered success rate the biologists at the G&F concluded there were less deer and as a result lowered tag numbers those subsequent years.
I asked if they took into consideration the fact no one could get to the areas the deer were unless they used skis or snowshoes and he got a look like you don;t have a clue what you are talking about.
I suggested perhaps there were NOT a decrease in deer numbers simply hunters not willing ot put the effort into filling tags and that they had reduced tag numbers on a herd that came thru winter at a higher number than figured which would lead to incresed deer numbers. I shared doing this two years in a row would snowball the deer number increase and possibly start to cause problems..........
A couple years later at an advisory meeting in Lansford they were trying to excuse the dramatic increase in deer numbers and the damage to vehicles and hay yards and were talking about a second season in January.
Go figure.
But hey those guys know what is up so the rest of us are likely "chowder heads".
