I kept out of this discussion - because most every forum that I have been on and tried to talk about deer hunting in Pennsylvania, I got thrown off of for speaking my mind.

Now I might be special or something, but I can honestly brag that I shot two does this year and picked up a very scrawny road kill - after the season was over.

I spent $400 on gasoline in deer season, so yes I did put a lot of miles on the vehicle going to and from my hunting spots.

I spent $135 - processing fee's = at the Amish butcher - getting one whole deer done up. Of which, all I have left is a couple of pounds of weiners and a couple of pounds of kelbassa left from a whole deer worth of meat.

The landowners that allowed me to hunt on their property - along with my family members all got something out of it and all I got was the bills.

I have yet to get a trophy buck out of Gary Alt's plan to reduce the deer population and grow them big bucks that they were talking about.

I have also witnessed several so called hunters - doing just what was mentioned on here about illegally harvesting bucks and getting old people and kids to tag them. Most of the time - they didn't even bother to tag them because the Game Commission wants the deer shot off and doesn't seem to be bothered counting how many deer these people shoot.

The truth be told, I only shot one buck since the antler restriction started and you would have had to pull on the one point - to make it legal, had it not been exactly one inch from the beam to the top of the point.

I spend as much time looking for a deer in the woods as I spend counting points on the ones that I do see.

What's even better, since I spend a majority of my time hunting in 2D, last year the first week, I didn't see a doe! I saw about 6 bucks and none of them were legal. Averaging 2 bucks a day.

In 120 hours of hard hunting, I might have saw 50 deer this hunting season.

Most of them were on the days when there was snow and people in the woods.

25 years ago, in the Game Lands, I would have seen 50 deer before I ate my lunch on the first day, hunting less hard and seeing more deer.

The people that whacked a doe at 8 am on the morning of the first day of the season, since this silliness started are the people now that are talking about quitting because there are no more deer.

I agree with a lot of other people that said that hunting is for the meat and trophys are for the wall. I never ate an antler - and I am not going to start.

As a matter of a fact, I am the poorest person I know.

If it was not for deer meat, I wouldn't be able to afford to eat meat on a regular basis.

Last year, I bought NO beef in a store and only bought a chicken about 3 times. I fish and I eat most of the legal fish I catch and I hunt and I eat what I harvest and I have a small garden and I eat what ever it produces and I buy the rest in the store and that is how I get along.

At my rate, deer meat costs me now about $9 per a pound.

Pretty soon, I am going to be out of the hunting buisness - because I will not be able to take off work to go hunting to see nothing and to get nothing and to give away what I harvest =- just to help out people that are better off than me and has more than me and are not very grateful for what I gave them.

If you have to ask a person how was the deer meat I gave you - then in my book - they don't deserve to get more.

But since there are no deer on public land, you have to either own private land or have a invite to use someone else's land. Which costs money.

Deer hunting is being priced out of my range and into the range of these so called trophy hunters that doesn't care if they spend $1000 to get a trophy buck to hang on the wall and has to pay $70 to the butcher to give the meat away to some food pantry.

The reliefers are eating better than I am already, let alone that they are getting their venison for free!

Why should I buy a license - to get nothing. Why not just stand in the bread line and collect free food like the people on public assistance and SSD = which is where they sent the people that refused to work - yet was not eldigble for public assistance - when ever they cut those programs a few years ago.

The deer are not being managed for us. The land is being managed for the timber companies and the Natural Gas Exploration companies.

You can't drive down the road through the GAME LANDS HERE WITHOUT SEEING A NATURAL GAS WELL OR SKIDDER TRACKS AND TREE TOPS FROM WHERE THE LOGGERS HAS HARVESTED THE TREES!

Only an idiot would sell land they already own, when they can cut off the trees and in 45 - 50 years they will have another crop of trees to cut - if they do not strip it for coal first or put a bunch of gas wells on it in the mean time.

You don't have to worry about the PGC selling your favorite place to hunt.

You do have to worry about the PGC coming out with a public lands use license - where you will have to pay for the privledge to hunt on their land.

If you don't believe me - just watch and see!