Deer/vehicle collsion down in Indiana

Don't know about 75%, but that does happen.

Hmmm.....well , guess that settles it then.

Surely the insurance industry would 'fess up if they had actually convinced game departments to issue too many tags to kill Bambi's mommy, wouldn't they? Not much likelihood of any negative public reaction there, is there?

Probably wouldn't do something like that and try to keep it on the down low just to save a few hundred million dollars. 8^).

Of course, we who see the decrease in the herds over the last few years may all be mistaken.

Really, it is pretty much impossible for any one hunter to get much more than an impression of the situation in his favorite spot, and local situations can change drastically with a purely local change in the circumstances in that small area.

My favorite spot that I'd hunted for about twenty years had been steadily productive, but it's a small area and the woods had been logged a few years back losing many good white oaks. There had also been a small increase in the number of hunters allowed. The the change in my ability to get out there as much due to some health issues also confused the comparison.

There was also the issue of depredation license use in the adjoining cornfields. Reportedly 77 permits had been filled during last summer, and for that particular area, the layout of fields and available cover is such that it could have been impacted more heavily than most others would have been. Hard to say for sure on any of the factors.

I do know there was MUCH less sign up there than normal, and lots fewer sightings per trip, but with fewer trips and of shorter duration, it was impossible to make a direct correlation.

I became acquainted with another of the guys who had permission up there and had hunted there for many years, and he had the same impression.

Most others I've spoken with around our area have seen similar results this year, so it seems to be true at least in this region. And on here and another site, the trend appears to be much more widespread, although there are still spots where the herd seems to be unaffected.

My brother-in law and his son put out food plots for the first time this year and nursed them through the drought, and have been doing very well on their property a few miles away from the one I hunt. They normally do well there, but seemed to be doing even better this year.

I stopped by the most used local check station today and asked the guy who runs it whether the numbers overall were up, down, or about the same. He didn't have hard figures, but his overall impression was that the total numbers were up slightly this year. Pretty sure my B-I-L and nephew check theirs in at that location, too, so their success was partly responsible for the good showing there.

Talked for a short while a couple days ago with another employee at the location who also hunts both seasons, and his experiences this year were more similar to mine and the majority, in that he perceived a pretty steep reduction in numbers seen.

So, without hard numbers to go on, I guess we all pays our dime and takes our pick of what to believe regarding the herd. My own best guess is that we are seeing a reduction in the herd around here of at least half from the level of three years ago, and it was then only about half what it had been in the late '90's when it was close to its peak.

I know that's WAY different from the official estimates. Don't know which of us is way the heck off on our assessment. They have every reason to be much closer, but I can't help putting more faith in what I see than in what a government agency tells me, even my favorite government agency.

I'm not accusing them of hiding anything or being part of any grand schemes. Pretty sure they can't count the deer we have left from the offices downtown, and they have to rely on other evidence to establish their harvest goals. I might question the validity of some of those methods of information gathering, whatever they may be, or the interpolation from their raw figures into herd numbers.

I wish I had more confidence in the numbers being supplied by those who say the reduction is less than that, or non-existent, but I just don't.