I believe the survey is what it is and mule deer populations fluctuate from year to year with an inherently amount of variables involved and I feel this thread just supports the fact that there is an inherently increasing amount of misinformation in the hunting community. My opinion.
You're correct. Misinformation in the hunting community is rampant, and it does nothing but hurt our cause.
A quick stop in at any FWP big game meeting (or any state's wildlife agency meetings tbh) makes it painfully obvious that the majority of hunters simply have no idea what they're talking about, and don't care about the data. Period.
Ask the same guys here in MT complaining about herd numbers how much cat or wolf hunting they do, or how many hours they volunteer towards MDF or RMEF habitat projects. The answer is of course, zero.
The guys and gals who are TRULY invested in the resource, and spend more than a week a year caring and learning about these incredible animals, understand that data matters, trophy deer still exist, and FWP is actually doing a pretty damn good job.
Almost universally, the feedback at these meetings from older hunters, was "we want more and bigger bucks", and they want point restrictions, shorter seasons, fewer tags, etc to get there...while younger guys who tend to get after it harder and see plenty of big bucks (a generalization but true) were pushing for higher quotas on cats, and more liberal antlerless whitetail tags...you know, the stuff that actually works.
The dichotomy is important to note, and does give me hope that the new age of hunters is doing their homework instead of falling back on the same old curmudgeon mindset that everything is going to shit and someone better fix it (while doing nothing for the resource themselves).