Another sore point is lis. prices
I have recently move out of state and now it costs me about $160.00 to hunt PA.
I understand that the GC need to create revenue to account for added costs. But, I am concerned that with the number of hunters already declining. Continually raising lis. fees will just make more and more hunters say its just too much. And in turn it may acually lower the total revenue.
Its disheartening to pay more and more to hunt and have the amount of game I see continue to fall. Pheasant hunting for example: I can remember only about 10-12 years ago my father, brother, and myself could drive just a short distance and hunt most any area with decent cover and find a few birds though out the season. But over the lats few years this has all but stopped. Now if we want to pheasant hunt we have to go to the state game lands and deal with a crowd of people doing the same thing as us. And within a day or two of the GC's stacking there are very very few birds left.
I am in full agreeance with the new antler restrictions. But I think it needs some adjustment. For this to really work Even junior and senior hunters should not shoot these smaller bucks. And I also beleive that the deer population is greatly declining in many areas. I think the does are being over shot and combining this with a couple hard winters joined with little mast crop. The deer population has been reduced too far.
Last year I ran into an older fellow while deer hunting. He said that he has been hunting that area for 44 years and this was the 1st year he was not able to shoot a buck the first day. And actually he said he never saw a single deer all day. I myself am seeing far fewer deer in the woods. 5 years ago it was nothing for me to see 20-30 deer and 4-8 guys in the woods the first day. Last year I saw 5 deer and 1 guy.
I think the Doe season should be changed to only last the 1st week of the regular season and the number of available tags sgould be reduced.
But this is all just my opinion