Jon - every silver lining has it's cloud, as they say.
I give up huge amounts of my summer knocking on doors and lining up hunting permissions. Then there's management of the group itself. You get guys who don't want to work, or don't want to play by the rules, or even want to dig dirt on you so they can get by with shady crap without you saying anything. I've seen it all, and when I took over the group I cleaned house down to a small crew that I can trust completely.
The negatives are balanced by the camraderie of our hunts, feeding our family and friends, and the hungry, and the people in the neighborhood. And helping the deer believe it or not! They are in far, far better condition now that we are controlling the population.
So it's not all a bed of roses, there are pros and cons, but we do get all the deer we can stand to cut up.
Every pull of the trigger commits me to about 6 hours of work gutting, dragging, butchering, grinding... unless I give them away of course. So far I've kept only three in the first three weeks of the season, but it's feeling like a second job already.
I've become extremely deadly after having been tested by hundreds of deer, but fortunately the thrill of the hunt has never left me. I'd probably quit if it ever did.
I'd love to see the pictures of your deer. I love to hear about and see people's successes!