ORIGINAL: andesman
I have spent over 20 years hunting in Pa mostly huntington, bedford, fulton and adams. I have good places to hunt in MD and see many more deer and bigger bucks there. I have taken 2 p&y bucks and several other 3 yr olds there.
I laud Mr. Alt for his efforts. But, one serious mistake I am hearing on message boards and dozens of aquaintainces is the AR is to blame.. While people do tend to focus on antlerless deer. The problem in PA is its liberal doe harvest! It IS NOT ANTLER RESTRICTIONS! The country is looking at Pa as an example and I am worried about this reflecting bad on AR. The PGC has clearly underestimated the power of the pa hunter to find, drive out and kill
deer!
Suprisingly I have 5 friends who killed the biggest buck of there life this year in pa, on both private and public land! I personally saw what may be the largest racked buck alive in the wild in Pa! Will score over 150, with 7" drop tine! While hunting in pa I saw 3 deer in 5 days.. That's on public land near my home. I have hunted over 30 days hunting in MD this year. I have seen avg. of 30 deer per day in MD this whole week of rifle.
So, Pa please micromanage your resources! Private and public need different laws. END the 20 days of high power weapondry hunting of does! End the the DMAP tags on public land! And please end the poaching of the 2.5 yr old buck off peoples back porches.
I have hunted Huntington County for the last 9 years and this year spent the first two days there on a friends property in Mapleton Depot (between huntington and mount union). I have never seen as many bucks as I saw this year, and have seen no decrease in numbers of does. I saw 2 VERY large rack bucks in 2 days, both probably would have scored approx 110 to 120 (pretty nice for that area), I also saw one 2.5 y/o 6 pointer, and 2 other yearling bucks. I also saw approximately 15 does and fawns. I understand that this is private property, however every year for the last 100+ years there are 5-10 does taken off this property which is about 100 acres. I don't see a problem there yet and still see the same numbers as every other year, simply more bucks and bigger ones. I however do not spend time on public land to see the carnage that occurs from the out of staters and others that aren't selective. My father also owns about 75 acres in Bradford county that is the same as the spot in Huntington county in terms of numbers of total deer and bucks. As a matter of fact, I was out in the barn on Wednesday morning and at around 8:30am, and 2 eight pointers came into the field harassing a single doe in broad daylight and awfully late in the season for running does.....you never used to see bucks in daylight like this around his place before AR. Maybe my opinions would be different though if I had to hunt public property