RE: A friendly deer camp debate...about PA regs
 

Johnny2: i agree with ya 100% nuf said!

DougE,,,not to keep singeling you out but your quote is:No doubt that's true Rich,especially around more populated areasbut that isn't the case with any place I've ever seen around here.
if im wrong forgive me but that statement is saying to me that you have not or ever have had a problem with your deer herd in the area your hunting and you are completely happy with the season as it stands,,,and by which the laws that govern said season?
if this is true then we are just beatin the fore mentioned horse some more! and theres no sense in me trying to tell you what i am experiencing because you wont believe anything im taking the time totype anyhow(along with a good many others)
But im thinking that i must have read it wrong,,why else would anyone take the time and effort to try to prove that the PGC and Alt are/were doin the right thing!
How do you respond?

RE: A friendly deer camp debate...about PA regs
 

Doug as a fellow hunter I feel you are stand up guy. But your constant posting of multiple doe kills just under mines your stance.

Is there a need for anyone to really know what you chose to shoot?

Why post aggravating stuff ,who are you trying to wind up?

RE: A friendly deer camp debate...about PA regs
 

You know, I lived in Clearfield 14 years ago and I drove to Clearfield as much as 30 years ago. I can tell you that on the way home at night it was nothing to see 100 deer along RT 322 from the bottom of the mountain to Mitches Restaraunt - Top of the Mountain as it is called now.

Why were they along side the road? Because there was nothing in the woods for them to eat that they liked. They liked the green grass that PennDot planted along the road there and that is why they stayed there.

If you look along the road at the top of the mountain, you can see in the woods for 100's of yards, there is no ground cover.

Where did all the deer go? Hunters - yes some - but Clearfield County was the Number 1 or Number 2 county in the State for the harvest of deer for many decades.

Coyotes - Im sure of that! They can reduce a population of deer faster than hunters ever could.

Road Kills? Maybe - but then again, there was always road kills along that road and now there is almost none.

The same with Potter County. I helped build a cabin for the people that owned Pa Pressed Metals in Emporium and can tell you that outside of their cabin - you could look into the meadow in the morning and see 20 - 30 deer grazing in their pasture. Now there are none!

In the grand scheme of things, 3 or 4 deer is nothing. You are not going to save the herd with the addition of 3 or 4 deer over an area of 20 - 40 square miles. We should have 10 deer to the square mile and not 2 to 3!

We didn't shoot all these deer in one area. On the contrary, we shot two in one place and one in another and one in another and still one in another.

The distance between any one kill and the next was no less than 3 miles!

To put it in perspective, my neighbor owns a company that sells Tombstones and he is a retired state cop. His grandfather was a higher up in R & P Coal - which owned large tracts of land in Jefferson and Indiana and Armstrong Counties.

This guy owns hundreds of acres and if I asked I could hunt when ever I wanted / where ever I wanted.

On my way to Church Saturday night there was 1 doe across from the intersection - not 10 feet off the road grazing and another than I had to stop the truck in the middle of RT 310 to let cross the road.

If either of them would have jumped out on the road, that would have been one more dead deer. There is one dead deer already laying along side of the road there right now. Which would you rather have - deer that people eat and enjoy or deer that are hit by cars and die along side the road and nobody eats them and they go to waste.

I will give you the repair bill from the last one that crossed there in front of me - $1500 to theTruck and I didn't even have the fender repainted. The fog light is still broke and the fender is bunged up. Guess when it happened - the night of the last day of deer season last year on my way home from church!

There are no more deer there now than there was 30 years ago when I was a kid and R & P coal owned the property and everybody was allowed to hunt there.

So how does your theory work where you think that if you do not shoot a doe and if you burn your tag - there will be more deer next year?

What about the road hunter that does not tag a deer and shoots more than one per a day and never gets caught. You didn't shoot it, he drives down the road and shoots it. Takes it home, cuts it up or gives it away and goes right back out and shoots another one.

With the unlimited tags, a person can get every person in their family 3 tags and shoot allseason and as long as he doesn't get caught doing it - can get away legally with shooting as many deer as they like!

Where are the deer?

RE: A friendly deer camp debate...about PA regs
 

I don't think anythingI can type will defeat that logic.:eek:

RE: A friendly deer camp debate...about PA regs
 

Rich,the area of that FLIR clearly showed that there were large areas with very few if any deer.All the deer were concentrated in areas that had food at that time of the year.That's what happens when you have such poor habitat.The deer key in on whatever few food sources are around and they quickly destroy those areas.If the habitat was better,the deer would be spread out more and they wouldn't impact the habitat as much.It's also a prime reason why a guy can go into those areas,see plenty of deer on occassion and the rest of hunters are complaining about no deer.Increasing the herd in that situation is the worst thing you could do.

rem700,I'm not denying that there's places with few deer.I do almost 100% of my fifle hunting andabout half of my bow hunting on public land in 2G.There are many places where there's few deer but I don't waste my time hunting there because there's no reason for deer to be there.I concentrate where there's food and cover and see plenty of deer.

bawanajim,this post was a friendly debate about deer management in Pa.I believe 100% in keeping the herd low in areas where the habitat was or is being impacted by too many deer.The proof is irrefutable and I feel no guilt killing multiple deer in these areas,

Rifleman,I lived in Rockton for several years during the 90's and Iremeber those deer herd on Rockton mountain very well.Those deer totally destroyed the habitat and now there's no reason for them to be there.The same holds true for thousands and thousands of acres in the northern tier.If we want more deer in the future,we have to have alot less deer now so the habitat recovers.

RE: A friendly deer camp debate...about PA regs
 

So Doug could you help me with why we in western PA Crawford county with some of the best habitat in the country have devastated our deer numbers?

The results are acres of posted land .

RE: A friendly deer camp debate...about PA regs
 

I never hunted in Crawford county but I have spend quite a bit of time in Ashtabula county Ohio.The areas I hunted out there were managed heavily for deer and were fed year round plus they left crops standing all year long for the deer.Other than that though,the only thing growing was beech,which is terrible deer habitat.

In Crawfor county,what constitutes some of the best best habitat in the county?Specifically what's growing out there?

RE: A friendly deer camp debate...about PA regs
 

Cussawago bottoms,French creek, red and white oaks ,farming,rural, the area is 50 percent forested .Stop by some time I'll show you around.Do a search on Pymatuning.

RE: A friendly deer camp debate...about PA regs
 

http://www.dcnr.state.pa.us/stateparks/parks/pymatuning.aspx#hunting

RE: A friendly deer camp debate...about PA regs
 

I just love reading debates on this subject!! DougE hits the nail on the head with every post. Some Pa hunters just will not accept the facts.