I can tell you in my neck of the woods of Region 3, whitetails were very common in the 40's and 50's. But then the sevre winters and heavy snows of the late 60's and early 70's came in and the whitetails had to yard up and were easy targets for wolves and cougars. They got hit so bad, there was speculation they were almost extinct in the area. They even transplanted a small herd here sometime in the late 70's or early 80's. There were small pockets of them here or there, particularly on the river bottom but they didn't really start to be seen again in any numbers until the mid 90's. Then, with the easy winters of the late 90's and early 2000's, they seemed to do quite well and a person could really harvest one every year if you put some time in. But then came the wolf invasion of the late 2000's and the added open doe season in 2010 and now, numbers are noticably much much lower. Harvest numbers can easily be attributed to the open doe season and the decline of mule deer. With muleys being harder and harder to find, hunters still want to fill their freezers so they will take advatage of the liberal seasons. I know my family certainly have. Take away those doe seasons and put bucks onto the same season lengths that Region 8 is on, and you will see the harvest rates drop drastically. If that happened, would FD then jump to the conclusion of a decline based on how he skews the data right now? Nope, then the drop in harvest would be attributed to the season changes. Funny how he is always skewing the data ain't it? Like he has an agenda or something eh?