Let's see PA bucks
 

Let's see some pictures of your PA bucks over the years if you have them. Big small, whatever. Include a story if you want. This is a nice 7 pointer, with a broken tine from 2014. IIRC it ran out on a drive with two smaller bucks. Shot it with a .30-30 as it crossed a creek.
-Jake

A nice 8 point my dad shot several years back.
-Jake

The best buck our camp has taken. A 14 point my grandpa shot in 2000.
-Jake

Got this one a few years ago in Potter County. 8 point with an 18 inch spread.

No pic of bucks taken this year! Pretty much sums up the drought the PGC has gotten hunters into. I hunted about 20 days of archery season, 6 days of rifle and about 10 days of late season muzzleloader. In all that time I only saw 2 yearling doe that I passed on in archery and one tail during the late season.
Worse season ever for seeing deer in my 45 years of hunting.
Also, I didn't see another hunter in all those days out except my friend.

Awwww Bronko, if my plans to hit PA next year don't get side swiped I'll swing by and grab ya up and take you to a couple of my spots in the Hershey/Grantville area. Still plenty of deer around there. Leonard got his usual 2 Does and a Nice little 7 pointer this year. Said he saw an average a 15-20 deer most his days out. May swing down to the Special Regs areas for a little Doe reduction (freezer filling) too if ya want :D

Indiana county was good to us this year. We took several bucks several doe. I saw, if I remember correctly, 59 deer the first day.. PA really is feast or famine. Either you're into a lot of deer or you're not even seeing a track. I feel for the guys who's properties have been shot out... Ours were in early 2000s.... we quit shooting doe for several years and the numbers are back way up.

Really nice PA buck there flags, good looking deer.
-Jake

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2014,9 years old

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2015,10 years old

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2013,8 years old

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The hunting has never been better on the public lands of northcentral Pa.

Where you hunting Doug? I have a cabin up on Hyner Run in Clinton Co.

We're hunting exclusively on dmap'd land open to the public or state forests.The majority of it is owned by timber companies as well as Moshannon and Elk state forests.We hunt from Clearfield county,Elk county and southern Cameron county.

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Here's my buck from this year.He's not a monster but I spent all archery season mentoring my son and it was the only day I got to carry a bow.It was a cool hunt though.He came along for moral support and spotted the buck as I was lowering my bow.I pulled my bow back up and knocked an arrow just in time.He was right behind a doe and a much bigger buck that went up the hill above us.I stopped him with a grunt but he wouldn't commit so I hit him with the can.He charged strait in and I killed him.

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First Saturday this year

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New years day flintlock hunt.

Good gracious Dougl good job out there, bag em and tag em.

The deer are finally coming back to the area around our camp. We used to hunt bear and deer up there but the deer hunting got so bad that we didn't even bother. 5 or 6 guys hunting bear the entire season and we would be lucky to see a handful of deer. We actually saw more bear than deer!

That's when you know it's bad!
-Jake

The northcentral part of the state got bad because decades of too many deer demolished the habitat.Without good habitat,fawn recruitment drops off the chart and we're stuck with low deer densities.This area is so vast and rugged that there's no way hunters can impact the deer herd,especially today.I see vehicles parked in the easiest to access spots but they're areas I wouldn't even consider hunting.We saw 2 hunters actually in the woods all season long and that's been the norm for the past 10-15 years.There's years I hunt some pretty remote areas in Elk state forest and never cut another boot print,even though there's been snow cover since bear season.

That's not really a big surprise.I'm not familiar with all of Clinton county but the areas that I've seen in the sproul state forest have much better bear habitat than deer habitat.They have over 1k doe tagged in the Sproul SF for a doe mortality study.Less than 8% are being killed by hunters.That's nowhere near enough to impact the deer herd.The Sproul state forest is some vast rugged country.I can tell you for a fact that I wouldn't be willing to haul a doe out of some of those areas.

I know what you mean about the ruggedness of the Sproul. From our cabin in any direction but west is uphill. About 30 years ago they did a selective clear cut on the top of two of the mtns. from our camp. For the next 3-5 years the deer hunting was excellent. You would kick them out of the brush piles like rabbits. We got a few legitimate 200+ lb buck during that hayday. But now, the under story and laurel is so thick you cant' even get through it let alone hunt there. When you even try it you hear the deer blowing at you but you can't see more than 10-15 yards.

Bronko, I'm running a race in April called the Hyner Challenge. I remember from previous talks with you that your camp is on Hyner run road or something similar to that. Is your camp close to where this race is??
-Jake

Those areas are very tough to hunt by yourself.There's no way not to bump them and they can lay in there all day and never have to leave,especially if there's a decent mast crop.You have to move them out which is hard to do if you only have a couple guys.If they're big enough,you'll never even get them out because they just keep circling back around.I'll put one or two guys downwind just inside the clearcut where they can see for a little bit and I go in the upwind side.The vast majority of times you never even know there was deer in there until you hear a shot.