Yeah I read you covered your a$$. Then turned around and stated your PROFESSIONAL opinion that deer numbers are at the manageable number.
It is a great article I just hope most don't know that you continue to harvest 7-9 does. Hard to tell people to stop shooting does while you continue to. I don't care about your hot spot and most others won't either.
Stop killing deer but I'm gonna fill two more tags........
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Did you read the article? If you did, you either #1) didn't comprehend it or #2) just want to cause drama. Here is direct quote from it;
'I want to make it perfectly clear that a blanket solution is not the answer. There are still hotspots of dense populations that need further harvest, but overall, Iowa’s deer herd is where it needs to be, if not too low already.'
Do you not understand the above statement in bold? I think most people on this website would agree with it (pretty much common sense). Is it not obvious to you that the deer population isn't uniform across the state, and that while the population is declining in many areas, it's also growing in others?
One of the areas that I hunt is very populated. It is a large amount of acres, with very limited hunting pressure. The deer population, if anything, has continued to climb there over the years. However, I can go one county north to other farms that I hunt and see a drastic decrease in the amount of whitetails that inhabit it. Am I a hypocrit because I choose to shoot does in one area, and not another, then share my concerns that the deer herds population in the state of Iowa is heading in the wrong direction? It's not hard for me to voice my concern about people shooting does in certain areas, and not others, as each area can be vastly different from one another which will lead to a different management approach from the individuals that hunt it. I have seen firsthand (and so have others on this website) the amount of deer that live on the property that Thomas has been shooting does, and trust me, he's not doing any damage there.
I'm wondering, what was the point of your response to Thomas' article? From what I read, you are only being a smarta$$.
Thomas, regardless of the negative feedback that you WILL receive from this article (from those who read it here and in the newspapers), I just want to say I appreciate that you took the time to 'get the word out,' instead of sitting back and not doing a damn thing. Forget about the haters, and keep up the good work :way:
), but, he has filled a few antlerless tags this year (I'm not sure how many), however, I believe they were all depredation tags for the farmer. I would guess the farmer probably requested him to fill some doe tags in order to be able to hunt there at all. Some areas in his county still have very high doe concentrations. I personally saw some of the demolished corn from deer on the property he hunts while helping him with stands this summer and I can say there was a lot more damage there than I have ever seen in the areas I hunt in Muscatine County. That being said, in my area, I've put myself on a doe ban. :way:
