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Originally posted by jjas:
Indiana hunters have been killing antlered vs antlerless deer in the 60/40 range since 2006.

In the last four years, let's look @ the data.....

Year Total Harvest Antlered % Antlerless %
2009 132,000 53,000 40 79,000 60
2010 134,000 53,000 40 81,000 60
2011 129,000 51,000 39 78,000 61
2012 136,000 46,000 34 90,000 66

So in the first year of the new regs (aimed @ herd reduction) you see exactly what was designed to happen, happen.
First, thanks for responding with something other than crossbow banter. That arguement seems to still be going full bore on this thread.

Actually, the data you provided only works *IF* you consider buck fawns as female deer. The pre-2012 harvest ratio was pretty consistently in the 50/50 range......female/male.

The changes implemented in 2012 cut the gap to almost 55/45....so the ratio did improve. But my point is...at what cost? Are we being too aggressive, too fast?

The antlered kill dropped 5,000 animals in spite of more antlered opportunity being introduced. This would seem to indicate a herd in decline, correct? Yet we killed 12,000 more antlerless deer than the year before. How long can this go on?

What if the 1.0 reg had been in place in 2012? What would the antlered harvest number been? Minus 6,000?....minus 8,000?....minus 10,000? Hard to say for sure, but removing 14 days from GF and ML season lengths would have surely made a significant dent.

The lower the antlered kill....the fewer dead does it takes to improve the ratio. This is the point I'm trying to make. We could have gone with a much less aggressive approach, proposed by the DNR...but deer hunters did not let that happen. Yes, 2.0 was a DNR proposal too...but it wasn't what they wanted...and their hands were tied by the NRC.

There are none so blind as those who will not see.