deerfly,I think you may be misunderstanding my positiona little.Do Ithink we'll ever have more and bigger bucks than ever before?NO.Do I think the antlered harvest will ever return to the pre A/R HR days?NO.Do I think Pa will ever be considered a trophy state?NO WAY.I've never believed any of that nonsense.However,I do think the antlered harvest will start to trend upwards somewhat over the next few years and then level off again.How high I don't know.I also expect the habitat to recover more and I expect the deer will be in somewhat better shape and be able to sustain themselves better during bad winters.I also expect with a little work,I can expect to have a reasonable chance for me to be successful and my kids to be successful in a few years.I think we had to take a few steps backwards to move ahead and I believe we accomplished that mission.The ground is starting to level off and I'm fine with the current state of our opportunities.

Hunting is tougher now than it was 10 years ago.While I don't believe we ever had a b/d ratio problem(biologically speaking)it seems to be excellent now.I'm seeing as many buck now during archery season as I am does.Last yearI actually caught 3 times as many bucks on trail cams than I did adult doe.I see less deer on stand but as a bowhunter,it makes for a pretty intense rut.Icalled in and killed two bucks last year between Pa and Ohio and passed several more that came into grunts,rattling or the can.This is the first year I ever had that type of response.The bucks I killed last year weren't the biggest ones of my career but last year was definately one of the best and most fun years I ever had,even thoughI didn't see as many deer as I used to back in the 90's.I called 4 different bucks into range last year on the last saturday of October and killed one of them.Three days earlier I had one of the biggest bucks I've ever seen at 15 yards but he never gave me the angle I was looking for and he never knew I was there.To the best of my knowledge he's still out there and he'll be a true monster this year.