Originally Posted by
Cornelius08
"You obviously have little to no experience hunting the game lands of the northern tier."
No i dont doug. But I have seen pgcs stats concerning the area, the dmap info from dcnr such as the info on the link i posted, the flyover results, and aside from those, I wouldnt imagine the gamelands up there would hold higher deer densities than other areas of the state where I have hunted, and the densities on those i have hunted have not been high by any stretch of the imagination, and all indications show that the areas spoken of are lower yet given that area of the state has the lowest overall dd.
What stats have you read about the dd on SGL's 93,244,90,77?None because like the vast majority,there are none.I live a few miles from SGL's 77 and 93,both of which are heavily hunted and both of which are in 2G.Fortunately,we have an excellent land management team in this area and some excellent sportsmen's groups that donate both time and money to improve the habitat.The habitat on these game lands is excellent and the deer numbers are high.I didn't have a 2G tag the last two years so I didn't hunt them during deer season although I do hunt turkeys and spend a fair amount of time on them.Three of my buddies that I lift with all hunt SGL 93.They all killed deer and they all saw at least 20 deer on the first day and both saturdays.In fact,the one guy can only walk a short distance because he lost most of his lung capacity last year when a doctor screwed up duringa simple rotator cuff surgery.The poor guy is only 48 years old and has to carry oxygen in the woods with him.He saw over 20 deer both days he hunted and he hunted within 200 yards of a deer pit,behind the PGC maintenace buildings.The one guy only hunted the first day and saw thirty by 11:00 am.I just met a guy that moved down from Ontario.He contacted me from HPA and stopped in my office one day to show me a new flintlock he bought and to ask me where to hunt.He borrowed a rifle and hunted the first saturday and last day of deer season on SGL 77.The first saturday he saw 21 deer and passed a couple of bucks.the last day he saw 19 and killed a 15 inch 8 point.The guy saw 40 deer in two days on public land that he never stepped foot on and killed a buck.That's more deer than he would have seen in an entire season in Canada.My office sits within 100 yards of SGL 77 on the 2E side.It's a pretty small piece of woods and it's bordered by I80 and the boro of Dubois.On the first friday and saturday my buddy,his son and nephew killed 3 bucks on this SGL.there is no shortage of deer on the state game lands around here.that's not the same story with the state forests.The habitat is pitiful and you'll only find decent deer numbers in certain areas and the deer only use them when there's food there,which changes constantly.We are lucky though because we have huge areas of timber owned property open to the publci and dmap'd.These areas are managed for timber but they do huge scale clearcutting which overwhelms the deer.It draws them in in high numbers but after about 5 years,the hunting gets tough because the deer never leave the clearcuts and it's almost impossible to get at them or get them out.