That was a good post and you are absolutely correct about the infighting among hunters being damaging to the future of the sport. It really isn’t something new though.

I have been actively involved in the deer wars for over four decades now and a Conservation Officer dealing with hunter complaints about deer harvests and deer numbers for over three decades so I know first hand about the infighting among hunters, the general lack of knowledge hunters hold on sound deer/habitat management principles and also the distrust some hunters have of the professional guiding that management. It isn’t new and goes all the way back to I believe the thirties when hunters first filed a law suit to stop doe seasons. There were news paper articles al the way across the nation talking about the deer harvest wars occurring in Pennsylvania way back then.

I became acutely aware of the hunter complaints back in the late fifties when I used to go with my father to sit around the old pot belly store in the little general store in our farming community. Most of the old retired farmers, who were also avid hunters, would gather there to complain about the doe season and the doe harvests in the areas north of them where they went to hunt. They didn’t complain about too many deer because deer numbers in their farm areas were still pretty low and not causing them much noticeable damage. Ten years later though many of the sons that took over the farms of those old retired farmers were singing a different story and shooting deer for crop damage while complaining that the hunters and the Game Commission needed to kill more deer. The hunters, the farmers and the Game Commission were all the subject of many complaints and infighting even back then as a result of the differing perspective on how deer there should be and how many should be harvested. There were still hunters trying to stop doe seasons even while their neighbor was killing every deer for crop damage that they caught on their farm. It was actually interesting to see the attitudes and conversations lead to arguments within that same little community over the next decade or two as the deer populations continued to increase in the areas south of the traditional big woods deer country.

For a long time the fighting was mostly between the farmers and the hunters with the Game Commission and politicians kind of caught in the middle. Basically the farmer and hunter complaints kind of canceled each other out over large parts of the state and the professional deer managers could do pretty much the right thing for the deer in those areas. Everyone was still demanding lower doe harvests in the northern tier where farming wasn’t a large factor though and that eventually lead to lower doe harvests, damaged habitat the ultimately fewer deer. The hunters didn’t and still don’t understand how that happened so they naturally blame the Game Commission instead of themselves. That battle still rages on today as the professionals continuous try to prevent that habitat damage from spreading to more and more area of the state.

Over the years more and more hunters have been educated on how the interrelationship between the deer and the habitat affect not only the health of both but also the deer populations. Some hunters are unable or simply refuse to become educated on those relationships and how nature really works and that is what the fighting is about today. I don’t see that as changing anytime in the foreseeable future though I think several other factors have also changed to contribute to that infighting.

One factor being hotly argued about today comes from the fact that in the past the Game Commission was usually forced into reducing the allocations and harvests through public and political demands to get a hunting license increase. The present Commission has seen how failed to make that mistake though and instead seems to be set on doing what is right for the long term future of the resources. That too has become a major argument because hunters aren’t getting the attention to their way as they had grown accustomed.

I believe the internet message boards also make it appear as though there is more opposition to the present management objectives then there was in the past. Actually I think hunters have always been pretty split in their trust of the state’s deer management programs.

One thing that stands out though is that the professional need to do what is right for the future of the resource instead of responding to demands from hunters that fail or refuse to look at all of the evidence proving the habitat can’t continue to give them never ending increases in deer numbers. The professionals have to do what is right for the resource or they simply aren’t being the professionals we expect them to be.

R.S. Bodenhorn