Great post Farm Hunter

The area I hunt is farm country. You can't get in your car and drive ten minutes without seeing a farm. We have corn, alfalfa, clover, and wheat planted by farmers. We have an awsome acron crop each year. The deer have so much food from farmers, that they don't enter the woods and eat everything. They only thing that I have ever seen deer eat in the woods is acorns. They all head out to the fields in the evening and eat some corn, a little alfalfa, and some clover. There is plenty of food left over through the winter that deer don't starve. We have a pretty high amount of deer around here, but the caraying capacity is even larger. Within a square mile of my house, there are 12 HUGE corn fields, 5 clover fields, 8 alfalfa fields, and three wheat fields. I mean, the area is all food. I have come to the conclusion that I will just leave the managing up the PGC, they have a VERY HARD task in front of them. The northern part of Pennsylvania is ENTIRELY different the southern part where I live. Trust, I have a camp in Cooks Forest, I travel up to Ridgeway all the time. The woods up there are NOTHING like the woods down there. I am not trying to offend any people who hunt in the Big Woods of Northern Pennsylvania, but they aren't that great of habitat for deer. I have walked through the Game Lands up there, I have been through the area. The only thing on the forest floor is ferns. The trees are all huge, you never see saplings in the woods. There is little farming up there. I havn't really seen THICK BEDDING cover liket he stuff around here. I guess that you would just have to hunt in my area. The woods are full of all different stages of growth. In the middle of a bunch of HUGE white oaks, there are sapling and crab apple trees. The bedding area around here is LITERALLY INSANE. It is SO thick. Deer around here bed in areas of knocked down trees that are covered/surrounded by green briar that is sometimes probablly 15 feet tall. You LITERALLY have to crawl on hands and kness to get into these areas. Heck, alot of the woods around here have lawn grass growing on the forest floor. Seriously. It isn't like the big woods up north. The forest floor up there is either loose/sandy soil, ferns, or decaying pine needles. You can see for over a hundred yards in some of the big woods up north, down here, even in the winter, you will RARELY be able to see past 60 yards. It is just to thick. We don't live in a very "MOUNTANIOUS" area. We have some big hills and deep gully's, but for the most part, it is pretty flat around here. The areas are just so diverse. The PGC is going to have the biggest war they have ever had in trying to get BOTH areas to have a good, healthy deer herd. Just look in my signature, those size deer are COMMON in my area. That is no joke either, the bucks around here are HUGE. Up north, the deer aren't so big. Alot of hunters will have to change the way they hunt and I believe that scares them more than anything else. They won't be able to go around doing drives and scaring 50 deer out to a group of 100 hunters. Hunters will have to skillfully hunt the deer. They won't be seeing deer every two minutes and they wont be taking any shot at any deer. It is going to be a HUGE change, but it will help keep the woods a safer place to hunt. I know that people up north don't see nearly as many deer as us South Western PA hunters do, but trust me, it is for the best. Which is more important to you, seeing a lot of deer or seeing few deer but the deer will be healthy, bigger, stronger, and possibly even happier.

Good Luck This Season: Buck Magnet
"Hunting is not a sport, it is a passion, it is a WAY OF LIFE"