Few have studied the antler restriction issue more than Pennsylvania ’s Dr. Gary Alt. His conclusions led to a statewide antler point restriction in 2002.

“What we are trying to do is have a more natural antlered-buck-to-adult-doe-ratio and a more natural breeding ecology. We feel that reducing the number of adult does and increasing the antlered buck population is in the best interest of the deer resource,” he explains.

“Scientists told us that to fix our Pennsylvania problem we needed to save half of our yearling bucks. This is why we collected information on 73,000 bucks in the four years prior to antler restrictions. We learned that in order to save half of the yearling bucks, the majority of counties in Pennsylvania needed to restrict the harvest of bucks with fewer than three points on a side. Had we not done the research on our yearlings, we wouldn’t have known this.”

“Prior to antler restrictions, only about 50,000 Pennsylvania bucks survived the state’s annual deer season, and just one in one hundred survived to age four. With antler restrictions, we’ve been able to save 75,000 to 100,000 bucks the first year.

“Launching 75,000 to 100,000 bucks into the next age class tripled the number of bucks age two or older,” notes Alt. “This tripled the number of bucks with eight or more points in just one year, so a by-product of antler restrictions is that hunters have been able to see more and bigger bucks. To offset the killing of less bucks we knew we needed to harvest more does by the same number and we’ve tried hard to accomplish this.”