The area Im hunting in this year has a LOT of excess whitetail tags available and a new law allows the purchase of as many extra tags as you want (at least until they are all purchased, after the lottery there was still like 2500 available for my unit). I already have 3, I will be sharing the meat with my family and possibly some friends. How many deer would you harvest if there was no limit? How much deer could you and your family and friends consume in a year without getting sick of it? At $20 bucks a tag its still cheaper than beef and its good to keep the number down I suppose.

I would like to think with the money we hunters spend on tags,that this money funds research to determine how many need to be harvested and your area having this high number should indicate over population. Despite this need,I could not shoot one and leave it lay which probably would be better than having so many that they are getting ran over on the highway. So I would harvest as many as I would use the meat for my family and then if I had friends that I knew would use the meat,I'd get them some. I am not wild about deer meat and my wife wont eat it. The exception to this is deer or antelope makes as good of jerky as beef--I can't tell em apart. So I get a small one for jerky meat and have someone that will take the rest. BTW if you haven't tried making jerky out of ground meat and using the jerky gun---try it,I bet you like it better. Now elk and moose(I like moose better)is another story. My wife and I will both eat that all time. Problem is,there arent any deer or elk here in Texas.