What the fellow in the back row couldn’t understand was why, back in 1968, he could see more big bucks “under an apple tree” than he can see these days in a week.

“Is there some reason we’re not seeing those big deer?” he said. “Why can’t we get nice deer now?”

“We do,” said Cedric Alexander, a wildlife biologist with the Vermont Department of Fish & Wildlife. Maybe even more “nice” deer than in 1968, though admittedly not as many. But back then, he said, there were too many deer in Vermont, more than the habitat could support.

What Alexander did not say, perhaps because it would have been impolitic, is that when the fellow in the back row went hunting last November, he was 42 years older than he’d been in 1968, and perhaps neither as keen of eye nor as fleet of foot. Had he been walking as far and noticing as much as in 1968, he might have seen some big bucks.

Fewer Vermonters (or Americans) grow up on farms or in farm communities where hunting is the norm. Even there, hunting has to compete with video games and online delights for the attention of the young.

In this case, there was nothing unusual about the fellow in the back row. In Vermont as elsewhere, hunters are becoming both scarcer and older. In 2009 (last year’s figures will be available soon), 70,165 Vermonters bought hunting licenses, fewer than the year before, which was fewer than the year before that. Including the 10,000 or so non-residents who buy Vermont licenses in a typical year, the number of hunters has declined 24.4 percent since 1989.

The department doesn’t compile age statistics on license-holders, but no one argues that the average hunter is older than the average adult. Fewer Vermonters (or Americans) grow up on farms or in farm communities where hunting is the norm. Even there, hunting has to compete with video games and online delights for the attention of the young.

No wonder many hunters feel insecure these days, as though theirs is a disappearing pastime. Perhaps that helps explain why Fish & Wildlife officials make sure to meet with them every year, as they were doing Monday evening at Lyndon State College. It was one of five “public deer hearings” held around the state. There will be two Tuesday evening, in Montpelier and Middlebury, and one Wednesday in Springfield.

Department officials give out information about last year’s harvest and this year’s schedule. But what seems more important is that they give the hunters the chance to comment, suggest, and complain. To understate the case, not all rank-and-file hunters are big fans of the Fish & Wildlife Department. Giving them an opportunity to vent makes sense.

The venting by the 45 hunters at the Lyndon State meeting was restrained, perhaps because right now the deer herd seems healthy and last year’s harvest was a good one. Hunters took 15,523 deer, 2 percent more than the year before. Even though this winter is much harsher than the last one, department officials think that the overall health of the herd bodes well for this year’s harvest, too.

A certain amount of skepticism is required whenever managers proclaim the success of their own management. But the statistics seem to support the department’s assertion that Vermont’s deer herd is in good shape, at least in part because of how the state has controlled it.

Adult does are having more fawns, the fawns weigh more, the herd is up to about 120,000 deer.

Still, the hunters at the Lyndon State meeting had some complaints.

“We all want bigger deer,” one said. Another complained that the herd was still too small.

Actually, as Alexander pointed out, all hunters do not want bigger deer. Some prefer to shoot younger animals to put venison in their freezers. Others, perhaps influenced by the hunting shows on television which make bagging a trophy buck look easy, want a big male with a big rack of antlers. Not everyone in the deer hunting community has the same point of view, even if they share the same myth.

As is true in other areas of life, there may be a disconnect between the image and the reality of deer hunting. In Vermont, the annual 16-day November rifle buck-hunting season is treated almost as a religious ritual. The newspapers run front-page stories and the television news programs often lead their shows with features about Opening Day. Sometimes it seems that the entire state suspends routine activities in celebration of the deer hunt.

It does not. Vermonters are more likely to hunt than residents of other states. Roughly 12 percent of the population here buys hunting licenses, almost twice the national rate. But Fish & Wildlife surveys indicate that only 55 percent of them, or about 38,600 people, hunt deer, and not all of them do so during the November buck season. Others prefer the archery or muzzle-loader seasons. That leaves about 36,300 who go into the woods during buck season, or less than six percent of everyone.

(Of course, “everyone” here includes babies and 90-year-olds. The deer-hunting percentage of the hunting-age population is larger, but still less than 10 percent).

Still, deer-hunting is important in Vermont, and not only to the deer-hunters and the stores, restaurants, and gas stations that depend on their patronage. Without them, there would be far too many deer in the state. As Mark Scott, the Department’s Director of Wildlife put it, “humans are really the only predators” of deer. Bobcats and fishers take a few deer. Coyotes take more, especially during the winter, but most of the scientific evidence indicates that they don’t take enough to affect the deer population.

So hunters are the only realistic deer population control mechanism, and the only effective population control technique is to kill more female deer.

Neither hunters nor F&W officials put it that bluntly, but that’s what it amounts to.

“We have been aggressive in issuing more doe permits,” said Scott, which is just another way of saying the Department wants more female deer to be shot.

Years ago, shooting “antlerless” deer was unthinkable in Vermont.

There are still hunters in the state who find it unseemly if not unmanly to shoot a doe. It may be a Vermont peculiarity. Scott said hunters in Maine have been happily shooting does for decades.

“In Vermont’s hunting culture, you had to look for antlers,” Scott said. There are still hunters in the state who find it unseemly if not unmanly to shoot a doe. It may be a Vermont peculiarity. Scott said hunters in Maine have been happily shooting does for decades.

Unless the females are killed, though, the herd would get too big, Scott said. Deer, he said, will over-reproduce. That’s what happened in the 1960s when the herd was huge, about 240,000 deer. But many of them were malnourished and feeble. Perhaps ironically, it seems that the most humane approach to Vermont’s deer herd is to hold down its population by shooting enough of its potential mothers.

In other words, despite what some hunters say, the herd is not too small. If it were bigger, it would be less healthy. Today’s population is much better for the deer herd than the overpopulation of the 60s. It’s also better for woodland owners who don’t want their trees destroyed by all that browsing.

This does not mean there are not legitimate questions about how the herd is being managed. Five years ago, in an effort to manage for more large males, Fish & Wildlife banned the shooting (except during Youth Hunting weekend) of “spikehorns,” meaning a deer that did not have “at least one antler having two or more points” at least an inch long.

The idea was that if these younger males were spared, they’d be more likely to grow into older males. There is some evidence that this is working; the rifle harvest of two-year-old bucks has gone up. But some hunters complain that the policy encourages the shooting of “genetically superior” young male deer (those whose horns have grown more) leaving the surviving “genetically inferior” males to breed, eventually degrading the quality of the herd.

Mark Scott said that “the science is still out” on that theory, but that the Department might consider altering its “spikehorn” regulations in the future.

Like all science, wildlife management is a work in progress. Deer herd management especially, because in addition to science, it has to consider the (often conflicting) views of its constituency.