They would have died off Bob?
Quite possibly. When I was a kid here on the place if you saw 5 bucks with branched antlers you were damn lucky. I have over a dozen nice animals showing up on cameras now. No telling how many others out there I’m missing.
Mom said deer had all been cleaned out during the depression where she was raised kinda next county NE of here. She didn’t see a deer in the wild until after WWII.
Since end of July to date, we’ve had about an inch of rain. Before that we hadn’t had any rain since middle of May. All seven of the tanks on the place here been dry all summer.