People complain about numbers all the time, but the whole point of this was to REDUCE THE HERD...
Here are a few paragraphs from a meeting in 2011 on this very subject where the difficulty of the task @ hand was noted....As a matter of fact, the northern half of the state was specifically mentioned in the second paragraph.
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Patrick Early, Chair of the Advisory Council, responded that ―This has been an exhaustive process,‖ but no matter how much effort is put into it ―you can‘t please everybody.‖ Early said he is a citizen appointed Commissioner with ―an obligation to represent all of the different constituencies.‖ He expressed a belief the Governor made the appointments to the Commission to make sure that what occurs is good policy. The Division of Fish and Wildlife came out with a first proposal to address this issue with the ―stated objective of reducing the number of deer in Indiana.‖ There are ―places in Indiana where there are too many deer and places in Indiana where there aren‘t too many deer.‖ The difficulty is in attempting to address ―targeted reduction, because you can‘t make it apply to this farm and not that farm and so on and so forth.‖
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The Director added there are numerous other issues challenging agency efforts to reduce deer populations. ―We still have access problems. We still have freezer space problems. We still have [people saying] our tags are too expensive, and, you know, a lot of people can‘t afford them. We need to take more does. We realize that. But I want everybody to realize that our overall goal is to reduce the herd because there are areas of the State where there are too many deer. It seems like we take our eye off the prize a lot of times.‖ There are legislators who are promoting the reduction of the deer herd especially in northern Indiana where there are just too many deer. ―So, that‘s our goal. I want everybody to understand that.‖ Carter noted his understanding that a lot of people passionate about deer hunting but for example ―in Clay County where I live, there are too many deer, and there are too many conflicts with humans, so we‘re trying to reduce that.‖ T
If you look @ the last 4 seasons harvest data (2013/16), the numbers have pretty much stayed the same (with an average of 122,500 deer). The fluctuation between seasons is somewhere around 4%.
