But you were logged in here all day long, weren't you?

Funny thing is everytime I logged in , you were logged in , because neither one of us log out. Try again!!!

info is nice to read,i learned a lot reading your posts.

AR is great thing i feel,bucks i am seeing do have nice big horns.

most are 2 year old deer.

if the kids exemption was stopped,boy, that would be great thing too.

right now from what i am seeing, the AR is not working do to the 12/16 year olds and ILLEGAL brown its down with kids along tag thing going on.

for ar to work, the above must stop..........

make it 3 points to side in WMU2G for all of us.

The kids are not causing any problems Sproul.
I don't agree with you that kids should be bound by AR.
The people using kid's tags on sub-AR deer are criminals.
We will always have criminals, and we cannot punish kids because of it.
We can't manage hunting based on criminal elements.

Harsher penalties for violations is a better way.
Purposely shooting an illegal animal-lose a finger.
Sounds good to me.

While you may have a problem with adults shooting bucks for kids, IMHO that is not the major problem with ARs in 2G. In 2006 less than 10% of hunters were junior hunters and most of the junior hunters only get to hunt the first day and a Sat. or two,so they have limited opportunity to harvest a buck and if they do there is a good chance it will be an AR legal buck since around 60% of the preseason buck are AR legal.

A much bigger problem in 2G is that there are ,on average, less than 2 AR legal buck/SM. So if kids couldn't harvest non-AR legal buck, how many more buck/SM would it add to the 2.5+ harvest? IMHO it would not be enough to be noticed by the average hunter.

rybo said it best kid

What did he say? I can't seem to find anything noteworthy.

I noticed a trend through out this post that fewer 2-1/2 year old + bucks are being harvested. Heres a little food for thought on that subject. Could it be that since only 3pts or 4pts or better whatever your case may be, means that the 1-1/2 year olds are sporting better antlers at younger ages(making what use to bea spike or fork hornin the past ashootable buck by most PA hunters, thus making the 1-1/2 harvest larger than before and the older smarter deer smaller) due to the better genes being passed along buy there fathers who grew to a better age. As a 2-1/2 + old deer he has now lived through and learned a thing or two about hunting season that the 1-1/2 has not. Lets not blame the AR for an ever increasing lazier and passive weekend hunters who if they can't shoot a deer from the window of there vehicle with a super magnum and star gazing scope. Would rather just stop hunting all together and blame it on anyone or anything else, rather than get out in the woods and learn a little more about there quarry.

While that is an interesting theory , I think the answer is fairly simple. The 2.5+ buck harvest has only decreased by 22%, while the total buck harvest has decreased by 46%. So the decrease in the 2.5+ buck harvest was what was to be expected due to at least a 40% decrease in the herd.
Since ARs were implement the 1.5 buck harvest has decreased from 113K in 2002 to only 61K in 2007. The increased antlerless harvests and resulting herd reduction has resulted in a lot fewer BB and fewer 1.5 buck.


I have no idea why you would make that claim when we are still harvesting 80% of our legal buck , just like before ARs were implemented.And BTW, those lazy hunters were very effective at reducing the herd by over 40% in just 6 years. Do you know of hunters in any other northeastern state that were as effective in controlling their herd.

bluebird I think you missed my point. I'm in complete agreement with you on the deer kill numbers. In fact I'll go so far as to say that I think the hunting is better than ever. I was aiming at the hunters complaining that there not seeing enough or better horn quality deer as they seem to think they where seeing OH so many years ago. The lack of deer kill is a result of many factors. the least of wich unfortunatly is the lack of new/younger hunters who are dedicated or intrested enough in deer hunting to invest more time/energy in the sport. I think the old addage 10% of the hunters take 90% of the deer or in this case Quality deer. I hope that cleared things up a bit.