I have been reading all of the articles in the magazines and hunting rags... I must say that they are correct. Having lived in PA since birth but having to travel to hunt quality deer most of my life has been a real problem to me. I hear the complaints but traveled around the state trying to verify this lack of deer. I was unable to find this issue true. I was able to locate deer in every area I went to. Westmoreland, Somerset, Potter, McKean, on and on... National forests, farms etc... Was there a density issue, yes.. but it wasn't to the extreme that I have been reading about..

The last two years have been the first time in years that I have seen new growth on my farm. Up to now, the deer have eaten everything including my shrubs.. Now, if I were to manage my cattle like that I would have the SPCA in my backyard...If I had a dog, starved that bad, another SPCA issue... Cattle live on so many per acre, deer are no different. Gary Alt did a great job with the bears in PA, what makes anyone think he would do any different with deer?? Additionally, on my trips I am always running into a PA hunter who does nothing but complain about how backwards PA's game management is... Alt was making progress, deer come back... They are active little buggers and once at managable levels, it could be regulated much easier.. Now, we are going to see the same thing happen...

We cut doe tags by what was it 50000?? That gives us somewhere in the 100,000 thousand extra deer..Half of which will be young bucks which will not make the antler restrictions and will be hungry as hell. Their bodies will not mature like normally fed deer and we will have young immature breeders. We are now creeping into the same area we were finally fixing...

The real thing I wish is that we could get some hunters to read about current practices and understand that we need to make sacrifcies to advance. It is not all about killing a deer. That seems to be the common problem.. Reduce the numbers greatly and regulate them. No one formula works perfectly everywhere, but given a chance we would see progress. The genetics here permit monsters like Ill, KY etc.. Yet we don't permit it and then we see each at the same camps.. Shame on us..