[Brian Pfleuger]

In my case, the situation is forced on us by the Anti loons. The deer population of the small village is about 10x the maximum healthy, sustainable herd and the vocal minority won't allow any functional solution inside the village limits. So, we (through a program run by Cornell University) hunt the edges. Obviously, we'd prefer to be back away from those properties but sometimes you just have to be in a certain place if you want to hunt certain deer.

Speaking of the Cornell program, I have to go back to a statement made in the OP...

You speak of "smallish deer, 125-150 pounds".... well, part of the Cornell program is that every deer killed has to be weighed at an official check station. There have been hundreds of deer killed, I think the program is over the 600 mark now but it might be 400, in any case, a lot. As of previous to last season, as I haven't heard the numbers from that season yet, the largest doe taken in the program was 149 pounds field dressed and the largest buck just over 200 pounds. These are NY deer, which while not the biggest in America are certainly bigger than most. The average adult doe is almost exactly 100 pounds, dressed. Ours have ranged from 95-109 pounds and the average buck (not your big daddy 6 year old 12-pt) is about 125 pounds dressed.

Most people dramatically over-estimate deer weights. I'm pretty sure they do it because "Jo" shot a buck that he SAID was 200 pounds and "Bob" shot one that was bigger, so Bob's deer must have been 250, when the truth is that neither of them ever saw a scale and "Jo's" deer was 125 and Bob's was 150.

Long story short, few places are going to have "smallish" deer in the 125-150 average live weight range. That would be average to high-average for NY and on the high side for most of American Whitetail deer.