MA Has some messed up seasons and regs...

[Dennis in MA]

They didn't check to see if someone had already bought a license back then?

Geez. This was 20 years ago. Now I don't know. What I remember is that everything was paper. 100% paper. I'm not sure things would be caught-up before the season ended - or the gun shop owner was in cahoots.

It MIGHT have been doe tags. But the guy was clearly, "I'll shoot anything" type of hunter.

 

[Mark from MA]

Ive seen some big deer, just out of season. There are also a few pretty good sized herds nearby to me, but they gravitate to areas between houses that are off limits and some nonhuntable conservation lands. A few winters ago there was a field close by between some neighborhoods where id see 15, 20 deer at a time. Mostly does but a handful of bucks in there. The other herd was maybe 5-10 strong, with 2 definite bucks. Ive seen two bucks id consider “mature” in my life - easy 8 pointers and nothing but meat all over.

Be careful when looking at winter counts on deer as they yard together in the winter. Like Maine. There are people feeding herds of 40 deer in one place.
It may seem like that area has a ton of deer. Yet in reality those deer will leave in the spring in groups of 2 or 3 and spread out miles away essentially giving the area a 1 deer per square mile population, which for hunters....sucks!

Even in CT. Where I can legally bait in January. One year they had 3 feet of snow and we were baiting heavy. Well typically we would see 2-5 deer on our hunts in Sept-Dec. Lot of times the same groups.

In January with the heavy snow, We were pulling deer in from other neighborhoods for miles and had 30-40 deer there a sit, because it was the best food source around.
And the only one deer could get at pretty much.

Literally could have filled our six tags for the year in January.

Say our group of four hunters did that removing 30 deer. That would have essentially ruined the hunting in that area for years, knocking the local population down to 1/4 of what it was.

 

[Admin]

Chris, come up here and hunt.