There is a reason that the deer are in the thickets & that is IMO the amount of pressure on what little land that is open to hunting.When the PGC first was going around trying to promote H.R. they admitted that the public land was going to be hit hard,but in thier opinion that once hunters killed so many deer in an area that the hunters then would move to another area which would give the overharvested area a chance to recover.Thier therory was to let the hunters with access, kill as many as possible, in hopes of reducing the herd in the whole area.The exact quote that was given by our WCO was"nature abhors a vacuum" & that deer would move in to repopulate that area. I don't think that they considered the fact that right or wrong most people either won't or can't go to new places. Specificaly if they own a camp & wish to hunt near it or are shy about "knocking on doors".People that own land or lease it are glad to see this situation because they are getting more deer pushed onto thier land. One thing that I have noticed is that the phrase "that is why it is called hunting not shooting" is not floating around as much as it was when people thought that the relative shortage of deer was temporary.As far as the amount of big deer going up, there were plenty of big bucks shot before A.R.but not nearly as much publicity.My own thought is, What difference does it make to me, if someone does shoots a big one 10 miles away,but we see only non-shooters if we see any? sam