Doughboy,
Do you have brands on them to confirm they're the same deer? And how is the fact that the land ownership pattern is public land relevent? Hunters hunting on public land don't disperse themselves equally; I am well aware of that. I am also aware that deer do not disperse themselves equally throughout deer range. Better habitat holds higher concentrations of deer and show evidence of higher activity levels.
Theoretically, hunters on public land would all scout to find the best places to hunt. If this were true and all hunters were equally skilled, this would result in most of the hunters being concentrated in the same areas, but this doesn't happen that often either. Hunters tend to space themselves out at least a little bit so it must be that some hunters hunt where concentrations and/or activity centers are greater and some hunt where they are not.
I cannot emphasize this enough though; wildlife managers do not COUNT deer or any other wildlife species that ranges over large areas. They conduct population censuses that give them TRENDS over time. That is what is important. Hunters want to know NUMBERS, exactly, and it is not possible to obtain exact numbers. It is, however, possible to obtain scientifically sound population index numbers that indicate if a population is up, down or stable and by how much.
If I hunted public land and only saw 7 deer I would find a better spot. The assumption piece of my example was just that, an EXAMPLE of what many deer hunters expect and an explanation of why those levels of deer numbers are not possible. I used the example to merely show that IF deer WERE equally distributed throughout a section of land and hunters were equally dispersed and each hunter would be satisfied if they saw 'x' deer, the number of deer required to satisfy those hunters is not sustainable. In other words, it was a best-case scenario.
Part of the issue, too, is how wildlife agencies publish population numbers. In Wisconsin, when many hunters see the deer density maps that say '25 deer/sq.mi' many make the mistaken impression that there are 25 deer in every square mile in that county. This is obviously not true and some parts of the range (that which contains the best habitat) have more deer than others. The deer density per square mile business is a calculation of the estimated deer population for that management unit divided by the deer range is square miles. I think it would be better if agencies just said 'we estimate that there are x,xxx deer in unit z'. What do you think?
