I don't know what part of MA you are referring to but there are way too many on the South coast. I drive through two rural towns on the way to work and it's a rare drive to not see several. I have hit two in the last two years and drive focused for movement on the sides of the road.
Your area of the state and mine are night and day as far as herd structure is concerned.
North Central MA. I can drive around almost a year without seeing a deer around here. Roadkills are very infrequent.
We have large fields around, drive around at dusk and youll be lucky to see a deer. Where 20 years ago you'd see many.
They overhunted the quabbin which was a good sanctuary for our area, and the forest structure is poor quality, too mature, lacking young edge cover, predators are high. Coyote tracks are way more prevalent than deer tracks around here. Winter is 5x the snow cover youll have on the south coast.
All though they do give out less doe permits its still easy to get one. If not shotgun toting groups around here
will get a zone 9 tag and poach. It needs to be managed like the old days. One buck tag, no doe tags allowed.
Not too much east and south of here the hunting is better. But even a lot of my zone 8 friends dont fill any tags, and they hunt alot.
My point here is people think MA has a lot of deer cause they see a few and kill one in a weeks hunt. They have no idea what a lot of deer is.
Yet many states like PA have alot of deer and still are one buck only with antler restrictions. They are seeing way more deer and way better bucks.
And when they can shoot a doe they take one or two, they dont go out and buy 3-4 surplus tags to shoot that many does. Its a mentality difference shooting a doe to them is a joke, they see 20 a sit. Where alot of people around here are like....holy crap a deer. Shoot.
I feel if we had a higher deer population they wouldnt be so trigger happy.