RE: PA Deer Management
PABowhunter, I think eventually there will be smaller units. Just years away though. I beleive he's on the right track there just doesn't have the staffing or money to make them smaller and still oversee them properly.
Deaddear, at every Alt run meeting I was at he talked about making sure the small deer you were shooting was a doe fawn and not a buck fawn. I even think it's talked about in the book you get with your hunting license complete with drawn pictures of a button buck.
Total harvest was devised the same way- true. With two distinctions- no one was up in arms about it and there were plenty of times that the Commissioners ignored the Biolgists management recommendations.
I do think the smaller racks on some older deer in areas like pike county is a suprise, but do you then really want to shoot less deer in areas that have poor habitat. You would want to harvest more. I would think you would still want bucks in older age classes, biologically speaking that's a benifit so why argue the restrictions- even in those areas they will still allow more bucks into the next age class, just fewer than expected. Maybe those areas should be four points to a side and 15 inch spread?!
I also beleive that more needs to be spent on habitat improvement, but WHO pays for that. Try a license increase to fund it and see where that gets you. Also, most places in PA you would need to fence after selectivly cutting it because the deer would not let it grow up into something that would be of benifit. There are simply too many of them an too poor habitat and thier the culprit. Unified Sportsman want to blame it on acid rain. Heck they didn't even care about it until habitat became an issue. Then all of a sudden they need a reason other than too many deer. No ones up in arms about folks not sending in their harvest tags, everyone would be up in arms if license fees increased to pay for the equipement/personell to pay for check stations, and still we groan on about how the PGC doesn't have an accurrate count. You can't have it both ways. Enjoy, Juniorpc.