Just returned from a 9 day hunt in Colchester county, zone 108. Been hunting there for 50 years and this year was a big disappointment due to the very low deer numbers that we observed. There were 5 of us at our camp and we do bait and still hunt and we covered a lot of ground. We saw very few tracks , almost no deer droppings and not much evidence of any browsing. No matter where we put bait it was consumed by bears , which seemed to be everywhere and we seen 7 bears between us all. Never ever seen a bear in the first 40 years of hunting there , but we see them now quite often. We have been observing less and less yearlings over the last few years, almost all the does we have seen over those years had no young ones with them. Other hunter around us all quit after the first few days due to the bear situation.
So I was wondering what other hunters were observing. Is the low number of sightings that we seen due to the warm weather, spraying to promote coniferous growth, large coyote and bear numbers or a combination of all these things or this happening just in our area ?