Quote Originally Posted by Chicken Dinner View Post
Pretty much the same here. Deer populations were definitely turning by the mid to late 80's and exploded shortly thereafter as they probably waited a bit long on liberalizing the doe harvest. "Doe Days" where you are permitted to shoot does are regulated on a county by county basis with typically pretty liberal amounts (ie, all season long in many cases) East of the Blue Ridge and more restrictive, as little as two days per season West of the Blue Ridge. The length of the firearms deer season is also split up similarly and runs from two to six weeks. In the 1980's there was a complete moratorium on the taking of Rockfish (striped bass). Those days are behind us, but there still bad actors particularly in the commercial arena where they'll set illegal drift and gill nets.
I haven't been hunting quite near as long as some of you, but the first few seasons I hunted as a kid in Kentucky, the rifle season was 7 days. They had early and late muzzle loader which were each a week long, and a 60 day or so bow season. You were allowed either 2 bucks, or one buck and one doe. That's IT. Total... not for each season. This would have been very late 80's.
Quality management and fees from license and tags brought'em back big time.