i do believe that number of hunters is decreasing.no doubt about it.even out of state hunters are not increasing.if it was not for chance to get a black bear, license sales would be way down. black bear hunters is what is keeping things afloat.also hunters are only coming in for a day and 1/2.they are leaving tuesday afternoon.they used to stay till friday.also i am not seeing hunters in camps in deer or bear season.it seems they are coming up more in summer. they only come 1 day for bear.

When I challenged BT Bowhunter who claimed junior licences were falling in the rest of the country to back it up,I just got told the following:

I guess we live under rocks.

Wow!! Will it ever end??

"Wow!! Will it ever end??"

Yes, when Pennsylvania gets competent executive managers in the Game Commission.

I submit:

Was allowing the herd to become overpopulated for decades good management?

Was allowing Garry Alt to manage the deer program unsupervised and without oversight good management?

Was ignoring the urban deer problem for the first 4 years of the Alt deer management program good management?

Was permitting certain areas to become near devoid of deer because WMUs were much too large good management?

Larry,on average,I saw far more deer while hunting public land in 2G than I did hunting in Ohio.I saw 8 doe and fawns by8:00amon the first day of archery season last year in Moshannon state forest.I also had 15 opportunities to kill deer that were well within range throughout the end of the season.I'd say my odds in 2G were far better than in Ohio.My buddy traveled out to Ohio 8 times and saw very few deer but did manage to kill a 20 inch 8 point during the late season.He hunted all day on the first day of their shotgun season and never saw a single deer.

Sproulman,the more you post the more I think you've lost your mind.Bear hunters average about a 3% success rate on a good year.If that type of success is keeping hunting alive,no one should be complaining about the deer hunting success.

I am not your personal research assisitant. The declining recruitment of hunters is a problem that is widespread. According to the USSA, we are replacing every 100 dead/aged out hunters with only 69 new hunters nationwide. Thats a loss of 31% yearly. There are literally thousands of references to this problem.

Crawl out from under your rock and look for yourself! If you cared about your sport, you would already have seen this many times over.

Which group demanded for years, thatwe nottry to bring deer numbers into a betterbalance with their habitats, by lowering deer numbers statewide:

(a) PGC staff biologists
(b) PGC bureau directors
(c) PGC commissioners
(d) PA hunters

Which group finally made the decison to bring deer numbers into a better balance with their habitats, by lowering deer numbers statewide:

Using the same choices offered above, I'm thinking it was a, b and c .

I stand corrected Dennis, of course your right. The agency is a stellar performer in the field of management. That shows in the number of licenses sold to date. We all know that customers show their loyalty with their wallets and their feet. In this case the customer is the hunter and trapper and they have shown their approval of the agency by buying fewer hunting and trapping licenses and hunting out of state.

Please be reminded that my argument is supported by July and August's hunting license figures, as well as last years 6% loss of license sales.

Okay.What if I saidit's my contention that license sales have declined partly due to the constant negativity put forth byone organization?

Perhaps it doesn't take much for some folks to give it up, when they've become unhappyand they're bombarded daily with gloom and doom prophecies and pronouncements, that it's all the game commission's fault that they're not happy?

Never been any shortage of unhappy hunters during my tenure as a license buyer, even when deernumbers were much higher. For as long as I can remember someone, somewhere,was grumbling about deerin PA and Idoubt that'll ever change.

Actually, I believe license sales were declining previous to last year and probably had been for some time prior to that. Blaming declining license sales solely on PGC deermanagement, soundskinda short sighted to me.