All I know is that I've been hunting in Pa for 26 years. When I first started as a youngster I'd see heards of deer 20,30,40 at a time, usually 90 to 100 deer spoted on opening day.Not enough time to glass them all, but hardly ever a buck amongst them. I'm sure some of these deer passed through a couple times, but you get the idea. As the number of deer I saw decreased the numbers of bucks increased. Why? I have no clue! All I'm comenting on is my experience. The last 7 years I have been more sucessful in shooting big bucks. I shot a 6 pointer in 1998, a 8 pointer in 2000 and a 9 point in 2002. The years in between I shot smaller bucks.
Last year I saw 2 young bucks by 8:00 am deer that I probably would have shot in previous years went free to get bigger. An hour or so later I was watching another small buck and a doe, when I turn and saw a shooter(just barely,but legal I'm sure, maybe a 5 or 6) sneaking out behind me. I turned to quick and he bolted away not giving a good shot I didn't shoot. I guess my point is that this AR restriction has only been in effect for a couple years and though we don't see 100 deer a day anymore we only need to see just one per tag. Alot of deer are still in Pa's woods we just have less access to them because people won't allow hunters or anyone for that matter on their lands. I'm going to wait another year or so to decide if AR a working as Alt said they would.