Well, I can't blame you for being skeptical, but I do have more confidence in our people at Auburn and the dcnr who produced these reports every year since 1963. I think there are lots of folks like the older gentleman that Goatkiller mentioned above out hunting in the state, but I've never seen any reason to doubt the work of the teams who produced the survey reports. There have been literally hundreds of people who worked on them over the years. I wouldn't mind at all calling them out if I thought they had done something wrong or had some sort of agenda, but I've never seen any evidence of that. They got 42.9% back on the year I linked, and that's an excellent return rate for a mail survey. I see no reason to call it nonsense.

There might be some difference in harvest numbers between those who returned the survey and those who didn't, but the wonderful thing about it was that we had data all the way back to the 60s, and whatever differences there were between the 2 groups would very likely have been similar year after year. That made it a great tool for understanding trends, and IMHO, that is all they need to know for setting seasons and limits. The exact number of deer killed in the state is unknowable and unimportant. The trend is what the dcnr needs to know.

Here is a link to the oldest one they still have on the website:

http://www.outdooralabama.com/sites/defa...il%20Survey.pdf

The reports always included their methodology, and even included a short statistics lesson to help the average hunter understand what the numbers show, and also tried to explain the limitations of the study. I've never seen any reason to doubt that the studies were not within the standard error. Dr. Ditchkoff was very adamant that they were, and I have always respected his work.

Another reason I thought the reports were accurate within the standard error is that the numbers went along with what I was seeing and hearing. When we had a bad year turkey hunting, the reports reflected it. When we had good years, they reflected that. When the buck limit started in 2007, you see a drastic reduction in the number of bucks killed. I've never seen numbers reported that just seemed way off. The GC numbers seem way off.

Some folks have used the last presidential election to try to prove that random sampling doesn't work, but that's not what I take from the past election. Hillary did win the popular vote; Trump won because polling numbers for the Rust Belt were a few points off in many polls, and he carried states the polls didn't predict that he would carry. But in most cases, all that meant was a shift of 2-3% of the voters. A shift like that is a game changer in an election, but it wouldn't really matter when setting deer seasons.

The dcnr survey report I linked said that data "Estimates with a percentage standard error less than 15% are reliable enough to be useful in making management decisions." I agree with them.

Its all a moot point now, so I will drop it. The hunter survey is dead, but GC lives.

Good hunting to all!