The habitat and the herd will keep each other in check, its been happening since the beginning. It sounds like there were plenty of deer to shoot, I don't see a downside to the freezer?
The answer I was looking for is rampant disease, emaciated deer, herd decimated.....none of that there.
That habitat doesn't keep the herd in check. They can out screw the habitat. Then you end up with more Deer than the habitat could support in the long term. They died off in large numbers during a hard winter. Have a soft winter and more lived into spring than the summer food supply. Their numbers were making it hard for the wood to regenerate. The wood regenerates in the spring also and too many Deer stunts the ability for it to do so. But, "Summertime and the living is easy." Winter was the squeeze and there wasn't enough food for many to come out of winter into fawn drop time healthy.
They have a lot of people in Africa but they have a food-habitat-problem and many are not all that healthy.
How many families can you feed on your salary before many start having health issues? Deer are not any different than people. Get too many living on a limited food budget and you start having malnutrition health issues. They die off quicker, they have health issues and don't produce healthy offspring. Healthy off spring often produce a nice rack. Hmmm, does that apply to Deer also. Good chance.
Now, where I fall out with QDM is when they advocate artificially keeping the numbers higher than the habitat can support. Which may be the dirty little secret of QDM. They are not going to let the known big boys die over the squeeze, so they hit them with the juice during the winter. "Only" because they want to hit them with a bullet come fall. That doesn't happen in the big woods of Pa and NY.
