RE: Attention NE hunters!
Pa is working hard to get rid of excess hunters.
We have harvested more antlerless deer in pa, than antlered for over ten years.
We are now at a level where we are harvesting 2 antlerless for every antlered. And we still harvest the same sized bucks we used to 20 years ago, we still harvest spikes a nd 4 points too because they are legal for youth hunters...
Pa's worst problem is that we have a large population of hunters and they would like to take a buck if they could. The current regs are causing hunters to drop out. We had a drop of 41,000 hunters between 2002-2003 and we will continue to lose hunters for the upcoming years due to lack of sightings and dropping buck harvests the last 4 years.
Turkey, bear, coyotes are not enoguh to keep hunters interested, because like it or not the whitetail was our keystone species (no pun intended), and with the cuts we are losing hunters.
Yes, Pa had too many hunters. That is why we managed our state to provide a lot of deer for hunters even if they were smaller.
The fad of QDM is not very well accepted in pa because it is based on rack hunting which many do not think is the goal of hunting.
The goal was to harvest the excess population, and not to manipulate it too appease wannabe rack hunters.
quanitity versus quality is nothing new, but when you lose the quantity and the quality improves very little as has been witnessed in pa over 10 years of harvesting MORE ANTLERESS THAN ANTLERED....... then you just have hunters lose interest.
Pa's worst attribute? They have no courage of conviction, they follow fads like QDM.
We don't want to be a trophy state, that is the shallow end of the hunting gene pool. [:'(]