“There is nothing wrong with the hunting in Pennsylvania other then the Commission spent way too many years listening to hunter demands instead of the information the deer and their habitat were providing. Fortunately that has started to change and we have a brighter future for both the deer and deer hunter ahead”
The above quote by R.S.B is a crock of chit,,and let me tell you why:
Pre herd reduction years when deer were running everywhere you were allowed to kill 1 deer with a single liscense purchase,,,then if you were lucky enough to go thru the hassle to fill out a doe permit ,,,send it in on time,,,,have it filled out so completely that it made you half nuts wondering if everything was right,,,and then get your permit mailed back to you saying it was ok to kill a doe you could start hunting,,,kill your 2 deer ,,,and hang the gun up for the year! Hunter demands had nothing to do with the deer being overpopulated,,,it was PGC greed protecting the deer that lead to over-population. The PGC proudly posted deer per square mile #'s in every hunting book and magazine known to men to attract hunters to the state. Not one hunter pre HR that i ever new of both resident and non resident didnt want to kill more deer per year and the hassle of getting your liscense straight every year eveen lead alot of guys to killing more deer than allowed to and in turn those deer never got reported as taken
No it wasn’t the wildlife management professionals of the Game Commission that were demanding that hunters only be allowed one or two deer back in those past years. I know what it was because I was right there listening to demands of the hunters and the State Legislature that the Game Commission reduce the number of antler less licenses.
Anyone who spends enough time researching the old Game Commission deer management reports and minutes, from the past, would figure out that the only reason the Game Commission didn’t start controlling the over population of deer many decades before they did was because every time they tried the hunters and State Legislators threw a fit, much like they are doing right now.
I was at a meeting where a high powered politician made the statement that if the Game Commission didn’t reduce the antler less harvests they would take their regulator powers away and they would decide how many license to issue. But, he was really only acting on the snotting and whining he was hearing from the hunters. So, don’t even try to tell me I don’t know what the real problem was.
The problem that allowed the deer habitat to become so degraded occurred because the hunters demanded it being that way. And, they are doing it again right now, with many of you being part of the problem that will almost certainly lead to even fewer deer in even more areas of the state in the future.
Now here you didnt actually hear anything wrong,,,you heard right! The Pgc handed out red tags to every farmer that wanted them for crop damage and boy did these tags ever get misused! Misused to the point where i dont even know if my facts are straight on the proper use of them so i wont claim to have any knowledge on the "proper use",,,but i will tell you my knowledge on how they got used. Guys were sitting in farmers fields shooting every friggin deer that hit the fields for months in the spring the years that this red tagging was taking place,,,they used the tag to get the deer home and in the freezer and then the next day that tag was being used again. So if a farmer got we'll say 20 tags to use for crop damage,,,i know of certain circumstances where 100 deer were killed with those 20 tags. If you read back over rsb's answer,,,he's right when he says that most hunters didnt realize what was happening and that doc. alt did understand because doc. alt knew that if he gave the hunters enough rope to hang themselves they would,,,he played on hunter greed and he was right! This same area that im talkin about had massive deer slaughters taking place at the same time by the Amish community for the same reason,,,all labeled as crop damage,,,it was a "free for all" and thus you end up with a shot out herd like Pa. is experiencing right now. Im sure someone will try to persuade you differently by providing some kind of fictictous #'s,,,and if that happens,,,you would have to ask,,,,what kind of mathmatical equation did you use to account for the #'s of deer being killed that were never reported. I have to quit now because it's sunday morning and i should attend church to ask forgiveness for all the cussing i have done already this morning typing this response
Even though the Game Commission did issue red tags to qualified farmers that allowed hunters to kill a lot deer you have that pretty much all wrong too.
Farmers in Pennsylvania, through legislative authority, can pretty much kill any and every deer that walks onto their fields any time of the year they want to. The farmers used to make demands of the State Legislature that the Game Commission fix their problem of crop damage. The Game Commission pretty much did fix that crop damage problem by allowing hunters the opportunity to do what the farmers were already doing.
Would it have been better to allow the farmer to kill all those deer instead of hunters?
I agree though that solving the over population of deer for farmers though probably was a mistake, but not for the reason hunters think it was a mistake. It was a mistake because the farmers screaming about too many to the State Legislature used to counter the screaming from the hunters that there weren’t enough deer. When the Game Commission gave the Farmers the tools, red tags, to solve their problem they no longer screamed at the Legislature. Once the Farmers stopped screaming the only ones screaming were the hunters and the Legislature soon forgot about the screaming of the farmers used to cancel out the screaming from the hunters so they too jumped on the more deer bandwagon, even in the farm land. At least before red tags the Legislature was only demanding more deer in the forested areas. That is why the forested areas of the state are the areas with destroyed habitat today, but in the future the habitat in the small woodlots that surround the farmland might also be destroyed with more and more farmers dropping out of farming and no longer demanding fewer deer or getting red tags.
That is why solving the Farmer’s damage problems might have been a mistake that leads to fewer deer for the future, unless we can get people, hunters, better educated on the deer/habitat relationshipthat really influence the future deer populations.
R.S. Bodenhorn