There has been so much talk about how the high doe harvests the past few years have ruined hunting in so many areas of Pennsylvania I decided to do some comparison research on the subject. With the method of deer management having changed in the past five years or so it has been hard for hunters to take an objective look at the harvests of today compared to the past because harvests are no longer provided by county and instead are only expressed by wildlife management unit. Most hunters believe that the harvests for their hunting area have been higher since the advent of concurrent buck/doe seasons and larger wildlife management units. The facts just don’t support that belief for many areas of the state though.

To make the antler less deer harvest history comparable from the days of county allocations and the three day antler less seasons comparable to the concurrent seasons, by WMU, I took each county that makes up the WMU, combined their annual harvests, for each year into five year averages, and then divided it by the total square miles of land within the counties. That then makes the historic county doe harvest data comparable with the present day harvest data for the WMUs.

I found that many of the northern tier, mountainous and typically poor soil area units had their highest doe harvests per square mile between fifteen and twenty years ago. In many of those unit’s the doe harvest since the concurrent seasons have been the lowest in the twenty five years and even longer. I am going to post a map of the WMUs with the units that had their highest harvests fifteen to twenty years ago shaded in red. One unit (3D) is just lined with red lines because the high harvest there was the period ten to fifteen years ago.



Here are the harvest history results to go with the WMU map based on antler less harvests pre square mile for each time period with the highest harvest period indicated in red. I am also going to include the statewide averages here just for comparison purposes.

Unit………………83-87.…………..88-92.………….93-97.…………….98-02.…………….03-07(WMU)

2G………………..3.98.……………5.48.… …………4.36.………………4.66.………⠀¦â€¦â€¦2.35
3A………………..4.80.……………6.52.… …………5.39.………………6.08.………⠀¦â€¦â€¦6.07
3C………………..3.59.……………6.22.… …………5.36.………………6.11.………⠀¦â€¦â€¦5.49
4D………………..3.39.……………5.25.… …………4.41.………………4.90.………⠀¦â€¦â€¦4.03
3D………………..2.77.……………3.99.… …………4.33.………………4.32.………⠀¦â€¦â€¦4.09

Statewide………..3.30.…………….4.93.…⠀¦â€¦â€¦â€¦5.07.………………5.81.………†¦â€¦â€¦5.66

I would think it to be kind of hard to blame today’s low deer numbers on the high antler less harvests since the fact is that the high harvest years occurred between fifteen and twenty years ago. Given the fact that the white-tail deer is capable of nearly doubling its numbers every year where it has quality habitat is should be obvious that what is causing low deer numbers in the red areas of the state is more habitat and environmental conditions related then harvest related. I pretty much fail to see how anyone could even deny that fact since it is so obvious based on the antler less harvest history facts.

Now lets look at a map that not only has the red areas with the highest harvests having been fifteen to twenty years ago but also the blue WMUs where the highest antler less harvests have occurred with the past five years.