Anyone seen PA harvest #'s for 05?
 

I'm sure they are out by now. Anyone seen the PADeer Kill Numbers yet? Primarily for Buck Season.

RE: Anyone seen PA harvest #'s for 05?
 

Nobody has seen them because they aren't out yet.

RE: Anyone seen PA harvest #'s for 05?
 

They may be out. Try looking on the PGC site. I've read where they are talking about reducing the anterless allocations. I wonder if they will or are they BSing us again. I hope they start listening to the hunters out there instead of those DCNR people.

RE: Anyone seen PA harvest #'s for 05?
 

Not out yet. These guys count real slow and then they must fudge and put a twist on the numbers to make themselves look good and of course always right and smarter then the experienced Hunter. Do you really Know how many of them clowns actually hunt any amount of time.

RE: Anyone seen PA harvest #'s for 05?
 

Every year... let me repeat... EVERY YEAR for the last who knows how many of years the PGC has released harvest numbers in the middle of March.

RE: Anyone seen PA harvest #'s for 05?
 

Not the problem. The problem with the "fudge factor" is that guys who call themselves sportsmen don't send in their report cards and then want to blame the game commission for not having perfect statistics. There are clowns, cardeer, but you need to look closer to home to find them. Try a mirror. Do you send your reports in? Do you know other "sportsmen" who don't? If you don't or you know others who don't, you are part of the problem. For the record, I have sent in harvest reports on every deer I have taken since I started hunting in 1954. I guess J. K. Gramp said it best when he called the game commission "The Blame Commission."

RE: Anyone seen PA harvest #'s for 05?
 

i think pa needs to get the phone-in check station like va. I am from pa but live in va now and i shot 2 deer down here this year. you call it in and they give you a confirmation number. All of it is automated and would give deer harvest numbers up to date. Seems like a good idea to me.....just don't know how much money it would cost but who knows how much it costs to hire people to take in those cards and add them up.

As for the deer harvest numbers, I would like to know the "calculation" they use for the "actual" numbers. It is some formula that takes into count the number of cards received to a percentage of ones not received. Like for every one card they receive, they predict that .2 or something don't.

I never think they will get an actual count in pa though because of what the others said. Some people tag the deer but then forget to send in the card. I did it by mistake one year and that is why I like the VA system a lot more. The deer is not tagged unless you get a confirmation from the game commission. When you take your deer to the butcher, he asks what is the confirmation number. Makes sense to me.......

RE: Anyone seen PA harvest #'s for 05?
 

They haven't consulted the magic Genie in the bottleand Punxy Philyet...they have never known what the harvest is and to be honest about it they really don't care...the only number they care about is how many licenses are sold..PERIOD, now that has been affected big time..but for those of us that spend time out there we know the numbers are way way way way down...just in the number of shots we hear..it's no where near the number that it used to be when it was bucks only..HR has worked and the hunters that carried out their wishes are to be congratulated..they did a fantastic job..thank god for all the now posted land, without some of the dispersal off of it, hunting would be over on all open land.....after 38 years this was my last one in my beloved state of confusion...and now their giving these freekin' vulture two turkey tags...you might as well give them a thousand..GOD help the few sportsmen left here...

RE: Anyone seen PA harvest #'s for 05?
 

Now we are predicting the number licenses sold by the number of shots we here.... Ohhhh brother..... :(

RE: Anyone seen PA harvest #'s for 05?
 

Wake up T in PA 3..not the number of licenses but the amount of shots at game..if you think it's anywhere near the number you heard in the 70's-80's-90's your dreamin'...get your head out of the sand...the game lands and state and national forests are almost completely devoid of deer..those of you that hunt on private land have no clue what the rest of us are going through...just like giving the PGC credit for all those monster bucks that are starting to show up...they have nothing to do with it..it's the "POSTED" signs that are the contributing factor !! ....oh BROTHER !!!!!

RE: Anyone seen PA harvest #'s for 05?
 

Nice idea, but what makes you think that the same guys who won't mail in a postage paid card would dial a toll free number? You would have no higher compliance with that system than you have with the current one.

RE: Anyone seen PA harvest #'s for 05?
 

When I started hunting back in the mid-50's, on the first day of BUCK season, the shooting was almost non-stop until around 10:00 A.M. This was the way it was for many, many years. I noticed the lack of shooting on the first day about 10 years ago. This past year, I heard more shooting the first day of bear season than I did the first day of deer season. No exaggerations.
Yes, I hunt northcentral PA. Yes, the mature forests offer little browse. Yes, timbering needs to take place for regeneration. But not ALL the area I hunt is mature forest. There is plenty of browsable woodlands in the area to support more deer. Yes, I also hunt these areas. The deer are gone. Plain and simple. Just listen to the amount of shooting you hear (or don't hear). This isn't rocket science, folks. It's what is referred to as common sense---- something that is a rare commodity in our leaders today.

RE: Anyone seen PA harvest #'s for 05?
 

Sorry, but just because you don't like the numbers doesn't make them wrong. Why is it that the only people who don't think the harvest reports are correct are the whiney hunters who don't like herd reduction? There are a lot of reasons why there are fewer shots on the first day of rifle season, but nobody wants to believe them.
1. There are fewer deer where you hunt than there used to be. There are fewer deer where I hunt.
2. The deer are shot at earlier, especially the does, and they change their behavior. Maybe yours are dumber than the ones I hunt, but my deer are much more wary than they used to be.
3. When the deer density was fifty/square mile, you could sit on any stump in the woods and eventually a deer would walk by. It isn't that easy anymore. Get used to it.
4. There are fewer hunters in the woods after the first hour than ever before. Most are in the cabin drinking beer.
5. Hardly anyone drives anymore. It is too much like work.
6. With antler restrictions, us ethical hunters can't drop the hammer on the first patch of brown we see. We have to look for antlers, and then when we see them, we have to make sure they are legal. We also try to avoid killing button bucks.
7. From checking into message boards, there are a lot of people posting during hunting hours. Why do you think they aren't getting their deer? Hint: The deer are in the woods, not on your computer screen.

Flame on, now.

RE: Anyone seen PA harvest #'s for 05?
 

It was pretty rainy & foggy the first day this past season too.

RE: Anyone seen PA harvest #'s for 05?
 

Actually, T, the hunting got a whole lot better during the second week. Sorry for the lousy hero shot. Nobody was around to take a proper one. This guy walked past my stand at 9:00 on Thursday of the second week (public land).
I saw very few hunters where I hunt, even on the first two days. Maybe they don't hunt in the rain.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v440/patrkyhntr17252/2005eightpoint.jpg

RE: Anyone seen PA harvest #'s for 05?
 

Sure was. We had snow on the ground as well. I hunted outside the military facility up your way the first day. Miserable day to hunt, very little shooting, a lot of complaining except from me. Iwas successful. :D

RE: Anyone seen PA harvest #'s for 05?
 

I consider it a lucky break for me to be able to spend so much time in the woods, T. I assume you were talking about Letterkenny? I have a photo of me holding a rack from a buck taken a short distance from there in Horse Valley the first day.
There is a neat story that goes with this buck. I was scouting on Monday, looking for tracks and doing a winter inventory again. On the way home I stopped in at Mac’s Taxidermy shop. Mac is my critter stuffer, and is also a good friend. He has several things he is doing for me now, including a grizzly I took in British Columbia last September. While I was there, he showed me a set of antlers from a buck a teenager took a few miles from his shop. It was a huge eight point with several kickers. Obviously, this was a trophy to be proud of, but the story about the taking of this buck shows that there really is justice in this life.
The teenager hunts with his father and a group of other guys in Horse Valley. Horse Valley got its name during the civil war, when local residents hid their horses there to keep the Confederate Army from stealing them. It is mostly state gamelands and state forest.
One of the group of six hunters fancies himself as the “deer guru” of the bunch. He picks the best stand for himself, and tells everyone else where they are to hunt. For the past five years, he has used one particular stand, but because he had not taken a really nice buck there, decided to hunt elsewhere this year. The teenager had picked a stand for himself, but the guru decided that was where he wanted to be this year, so he told the kid to go to the stand he didn’t want to hunt anymore.
At nine o’clock, the kid looked to his left and caught a glimpse of antlers. A huge buck walked out in front of him. He raised his rifle and downed it with one shot. Needless to say, he was a bit on the excited side.
Mac usually hunts most of the first day of rifle season, and then comes in to his shop around seven o’clock in the evening to check his phone messages. When he arrived, he had not one, but three messages from the kid. When he returned the phone calls, the kid came right over to the shop with his father, and also one slightly upset deer guru.
Now, most people I hunt with would have been excited and happy for the kid, but obviously, this was not the case for our guru. This leads me to believe that there is justice in this life. At least there was in this case. In the photograph below, I am holding the antlers from this buck. The kid sure has a right to be proud of this one.
Click on the link below to see a photo of the rack.



http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v440/patrkyhntr17252/HorseValleyBuck.jpg

RE: Anyone seen PA harvest #'s for 05?
 

Good for the kid. A story with a happy ending.

Spent some time fishing & hunting Horse Valley while in college at Ship.

I dropped that deer off at a local butcher shop in ... can't think of the town name. Anyhow, they had plenty of pictures of some very nice bucks taken in previous years and during archery season. Town is past Pleasant Hall headed towards the mountain.

RE: Anyone seen PA harvest #'s for 05?
 

The town would probably be Upper Strasburg, T. The butcher shop, possibly Eddie Guyer's?

RE: Anyone seen PA harvest #'s for 05?
 

Yep, I believe that's it.

RE: Anyone seen PA harvest #'s for 05?
 

Geez I just asked a simple question... touchy touchy

RE: Anyone seen PA harvest #'s for 05?
 

If the PGC knew that all of these hunters were not sending in the cards why did they not fine them, IMO they never had that problem in the first place it was just another excuse for the slaughter.THEY COULD MAKE A LOT OF MONEY ON THESE FINES why didn't they do it ???

RE: Anyone seen PA harvest #'s for 05?
 

I always sent in my harvest cards. I quit hunting deer in pa last year due to lack of property to hunt and lack of deer.Now I quess I will really upset you. I still buy a pa. license and in 5C unit 10 doe tags and never use them.All my neighbors do the same thing and plant food plots and post and patrol hopefully we can bring the heard back in ourarea. I live in the country and have seen a 70% decrease in deer in the past 4 years. I hunt west Virginia now. See lots of deer ,but NEVER shoot more then 1 deer out of a area or heard.

RE: Anyone seen PA harvest #'s for 05?
 

Do you really want to know? You aren't gonna like this answer. They can't fine them. All the jerkovski has to do is say, "I mailed it in, but it got lost in the mail." Check it out. It is sad but true. There isn't anyone to blame in this but the idiots who don't send their cards in. Sorry if that busts your bubble. If you want to do something about it, kill the lawyer that thought this excuse up.

Personally, I think the lowest animal in the food chain in this state is the idiot that won't send in his report cards. Lower than pond scum IMO.

RE: Anyone seen PA harvest #'s for 05?
 

That is not true, my son had to make a trip from Lancaster Co. to Cameron Co. to pay a fine for not sending a card in, he said he sent it in but they said they didn't get it, it cost him a days work and a lot of gas money, if they would do this to more hunters they would send in the card or take it to Harrisburg.

RE: Anyone seen PA harvest #'s for 05?
 

If the citation was for not sendingthe report card to Harrisburg as required by regulation, why would he have to go from Lancaster to Cameron County to handle it?

The only way any officer would know that a card wasn't sent in, is if they checked the taggeddeer at a butcher shop, at acampor during a field check. Care to elaborate on this one, because it makes no sense.

The PGC has now dropped the requirement that DMAP "reports" be sent back in order to get a DMAP tag in the following season for the same reason: lack of compliance by hunters.

How much of a sacrifice does it take to spend three minutes to fill out a postage-paid postcard and drop it in the mail?

RE: Anyone seen PA harvest #'s for 05?
 

Evidently more than it requires to complain on internet message boards.

RE: Anyone seen PA harvest #'s for 05?
 

He got his Doe tag from Cameron Co. game warden checked the deer at camp, they must have checked the records in Harrisburg and his name didn't show up, I have no reason to lie about the story.

RE: Anyone seen PA harvest #'s for 05?
 

again i dont think the people that are "complaining"on the internet are the ones not sending in the cards.
paturkhntr- please dont take this the wrong way, but your buck you got this year is that 2 1/2 yr old, im sure its a great buck but i was wondering what you thought the age of that buck was. from the angle looks pretty young

RE: Anyone seen PA harvest #'s for 05?
 

I certainly take no offense at your question. I aged the buck in the photo by tooth succession and you are correct PA Gobbler. He was an eight-point and was 1.5 years old. I think this indicates that where I hunt, the deer are reaching their genetic potential and that they obviously have enough food to do so. I shot this buck on the Thursday of the second week of rifle season. During the first week, I held out for one of the ten-points I saw during early seasons, but they must have crawled under a rock and pulled the rock in after them (LOL). I guess a buck doesn't get to be three or four years old without getting a PhD in hunter avoidance, does he. When this guy walked past my rock, I made a decision to harvest him. I guess some might have passed him up, but I didn't. This is the second year in a row that I waited until Thursday of the second week to take a buck. There must be something magic about the second Thursday.

For the record, I am not an alpha hunter, and I hope I am not coming across like one. I am not a great hunter, but I am persistent. I stick it out longer than most do and sometimes get rewarded.

My point on the "complainers" is that they are blaming the game commission for having less than perfect harvest data when they should put the blame where it belongs. It is the slobs that refuse to send in report cards that make it necessary for them to use the system they use. Still, I understand that we have to blame someone. Isn't that the American way?

RE: Anyone seen PA harvest #'s for 05?
 

I wanted to post back earlier regarding my comments about how VA does it. My question is are you talking about people who don't tag the deer at all or just the ones who don't send in their cards? If you are talking about people who don't tag their deer at all, there isn't much you can do about that. But for the people who do tag their deer and don't send their cards, the VA phone in system would def work. There is no physical tag you put on the deer but your license has 6 lines for deer tags and a notch to be cut off. you get 3 buck tags and 3 doe tags. The deer is not tagged until you call it in and get a confirmation number. You can not take a deer to the butcher with the number.This would solvethe problem for people who don't send in their tags. Now if you are talking aboutpeople that don't tag the deer at all and just shoot them and take them back to their house for butchering, then there really isn't anything you can do about that. Hope this helps!

RE: Anyone seen PA harvest #'s for 05?
 

Didn't say you lied. If he lost a day to travel to Cameron Co. then I'll assume he appealed and asked for a hearing, since he could've just mailed the money to the magistrate for the citation?

This is one of the few cases most of us have heard about, since the "lost in the mail" excuse seems to be almost universally accepted now, per their decision to drop the DMAP reporting requirement.

RE: Anyone seen PA harvest #'s for 05?
 

I'm confused---(nothing new)--- I've checked both the DCNR and PGC websites, and can find no information on the dropping of the reporting requirements. When did this happen, and where was it published?? ( this for the DMAP license)

RE: Anyone seen PA harvest #'s for 05?
 

http://www.pgc.state.pa.us/pgc/cwp/view.asp?A=11&Q=167205

2nd bullet point under "Board Takes Other Actions" at the bottom.

RE: Anyone seen PA harvest #'s for 05?
 

Yep, you're right---- there it is----Thanks.