Too many people wounding and losing aa many bucks as you describe is awful, and I do remember when we could drive through certain places in what now are units 27 and 1 and see 250 to 300 deer in a morning from the roads. Also, your observation that the collapse in deer numbers occurred at about the same time our elk herds exploded concurs with mine.
However, excessive killing of bucks can't explain why (seemingly overnight) there were fewer deer of any age or sex, or why this reduced population persisted for so many years under restrictive permit-only hunting.,
No one knows if the widespread tree thinning that began after the R/C fire is one of the reasons we're seeing more deer now, but for what it's worth, I'm guessing it is.
Whatever the reason, I (for one) welcome it and am also happy to see that elk herds so far aren't declining as our deer return.
In mid August last year I saw herds in two different locations with more than three dozen does and fawns in them. That's not yet like the good old days of the 1960s and 1970s, but it's a darned good start.
