I believe that if your reason for hunting is to harvest a deer , then in order for that hunt to be defined as a success, by definition of the word "success", you have to harvest a deer.

Now if your reason for hunting is to get away from the wife or the job, or to just spend a day in the woods watching the leaves fall, then your main objective was not harvesting the deer in the first place, so you might say you had a successful day in the woods because you accomplished your goal , but you did not a have a successful hunt.

Most guys I hear complaining are unhappy because they are not seeing enough deer to make their hunts enjoyable rather than frustrating. You ,on the other hand, are lucky enough to hunt where you are still seeing enough deer so you can kill your share of does and pass on legal buck. That is not what the vast majority of PA hunters are experiencing and therefore IMHO you can't begin to understand the frustration expressed many hunters in PA.