EXCELLENT stuff BGG. Now for those who think BGG's buck numbers look low for 1,280 acres (1 mature buck), remember that deer density per square mile numbers are a "snapshot in time" calculation. If you could take an aerial photo or satellite image of a large area where every deer showed up as a dot--with their accompanying age and sex data--you could calculate the square miles in the image, count the deer, and then calculate an average deer density per square mile number. And that would be accurate.
But now look at this situation from a manager/hunters perspective. The problem with this deer density number (and total buck numbers by age per square mile), is that deer move around, and some deer--especially bucks--move around a lot. Some bucks will be covering 3,4, or 5 square miles. Some bucks have been documented covered 11 or 12 square miles. Now in the snapshot in time density image, a single mature buck only gets to be counted in the one square mile he appears in. Yet because that buck travels all over, manager/hunters running photo censuses end up getting him on film and recording him in their census in multiple square mile areas. What this leads to is individual mature bucks being "censused" on many different properties.
A an example of what this leads to, imagine a perfectly square 4-square mile area (2 miles east-west by 2 miles north-south), with each of the single square mile blocks owned by a different person. By BGG's calculations (1 mature buck per every 2 square miles), there should be 2 mature bucks in the 4-square mile area. But because these two bucks travel all over the 4-square mile area, managers censusing in each of the square mile blocks would catch both bucks in their census, giving each of them a calculation of 2 mature bucks per square mile. If the 4 land-owners then compare data, they would come up with 8 mature bucks in the 4-square mile area (2 mature bucks per square mile times 4 square miles). Yet there are really only 2 mature bucks in that 4 square mile area.
But from hunters perspective, this isn't a bad thing. If a hunter has an entire square mile, by BGG's calculations (1 mature buck per 2 square miles) the hunter gets depressed he only has a 50/50 chance of having even 1 mature buck on his property. Yet because bucks move around a lot, he may end up censusing several mature bucks crossing his property during the hunting season. Now none of these mature bucks live exclusively within his square mile property, he still gets to hunt all of them.
BGG's density numers are pretty close for my area. And with only 3/4 of a square mile of property I should only have 0.375 mature bucks on the property (a 38% chance of having even 1 mature buck). Yet because bucks move around a lot, I average getting 3 or 4 mature bucks using the property every year. Now of course I'm sharing those mature bucks with all of my neighbors for a considerabe distance, but I still get to hunt those mature bucks.