ORIGINAL: Lanse couche couche
I must again congratulate you PA boys on having some of the more entertaining threads on HNI. I am curious though; lots of people are talking about how bad deer hunting, and possibly other forms of hunting, are in PA. However, is that just the case in some public areas. Or, can any of you speak from the perspective of private landholders or those who primarily hunt on private ground.
The fact is that the deer hunting in Pennsylvania is still some of the best in the nation and based on the average harvests the state were hunters harvest the most deer per square mile.
Here is the deer harvest data per square mile of land mass for some of the surrounding states.
State…………..Five average deer harvest/sq. mile
Penna…………………….9.41
Maryland………………..9.25
Wisconsin……………….8.64
New Jersey………………8.29
Michigan…………………8.03
West Virginia…………….7.60
Delaware…………………6.63
Virginia………………….5.62
Ohio……………………..5.21
New York……………….4.82
As you can see the Pennsylvania deer populations must still be pretty good or hunters simply wouldn’t be able to harvest as many as they do.
Of course there are areas of Pennsylvania that have more deer then other areas, just like is true in every state.
I will post the five highest harvest units and the five lowest harvest units based on the five year harvest averages. All data is in harvests per square mile of land mass.
Ranking………..Unit………….Antlerless harvest…………….antlered harvest…………….total harvest
1.……………….2B…………………10.70. ………………………3.52.……………… ………14.22
2.……………….2A………………….9.49. ……………………….4.29.……………†¦â€¦â€¦â€¦13.78
3.……………….2D………………….8.53. ……………………….4.11.……………†¦â€¦â€¦â€¦12.64
4.……………….5C………………….7.94. ……………………….3.31.……………†¦â€¦â€¦â€¦11.25
5.……………….1A………………….7.65. ……………………….2.95.……………†¦â€¦â€¦â€¦10.60
18.………………2F………………….4.50. ……………………….2.64.……………†¦â€¦â€¦â€¦7.14
19.………………5A………………….4.42. ……………………….1.97.……………†¦â€¦â€¦â€¦6.39
20.………………3D………………….4.09. ……………………….2.00.……………†¦â€¦â€¦â€¦6.09
21.………………4D………………….4.03. ……………………….2.33.……………†¦â€¦â€¦â€¦6.36
22.………………2G………………….2.35. ……………………….1.65.……………†¦â€¦â€¦â€¦4.00
Don’t put too much stock in all of the snotting and whining you hear from some of the hunters. Many of the ones complaining of no deer today were the same ones complaining about no deer from having killed too many ten and even fifteen and twenty years ago too. I have been listening to hunters complaining that the Game Commission is issuing too many doe tags and killing off to many of the deer every single year for over forty years. Even while the deer populations were very obviously increasing.
One of the problems today is that many of the hunters remember the days of twenty and thirty years ago when all of the state’s hunters had to hunt on about a third of the state to find deer. Back in those days all a hunter had to do was find any spot and stand there as deer, fleeing hordes of hunters ran past them all day long. Now our hunters are equally spread over the entire state so we have large areas where deer can escape the hunting pressure and aren’t being chased past hunters all day long. Now hunters have to hunt were the deer are instead of just where they want to sit and wait if they expect to see deer. Many hunters have refused or totally failed to adjust to the fact they now have to hunt their own deer up in it’s habitat instead of just sitting and waiting for someone to chase one past them though the open woods where most deer have no desire to ever go.
Make no mistake about it, Pennsylvania still has some of the best deer hunting in the nation and it is once again getting even better for the hunters that actually like to hunt.
R.S. Bodenhorn