How many adult doe do you see that don't have fawns? What percentage of those adult doe have twins?

I live in the Poconos, Wayne county and this year regular rifle season was very hard on hunters. The wind was a killer and with the snow, deer were not moving very much. I had to take off to get some time in and I did get a doe. I did not see a buck except during the early muzzleloader when I saw a nice 9 pointer and a 6 pointer, both I could not shoot. I did get another doe though.

Am I happy with the season as it stands, well I'm seeing and shooting more does but those bucks are still few and far between. I also have a hunting club next to me which I am a member, but the owner of the club and most members only hunt bucks. Out of 25 hunters on 460 acres, 1 buck was taken this year.

I plan on hunting strictly buck during archery this year since I havn't gotten one except for a spike when they were legal to shoot.

I hope they would open up the muzzleloader season with longer early seasons including buck, plus Sunday hunting.

T

I guess I hunted differently last season than I do when we have a good acorn crop but I still had a pretty good season. I feel the antler restriction and the doe culling are more for me since I'd rather only see deer I'd like to shoot than see tons of deer that I don't.

Do you realize that over 40% of the bucks saved by AR won't be harvested as 2.5 buck. We will loose around 20% to normal adult mortality and at least another 20% won't be AR legal as 2.5's. Furthermore,Alt was wrong when he claimed that most of the spikes saved by AR would be 8 pts. as 2.5 buck. In Pike Co only 40% of all 2.5+ buck were 8+ pts. and statewide it was only 44%. Those percentages are all based on all bucks that were carried over. Therefore , the perecentage of spikes that would be 8 Pt would be much lower than the 50% Alt claims and 30-40% may not be AR legal.

No, I did not know that. Where did you get those figures from?

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the herd has gone down around my prperty in mercer county. . . . .i can remeber opening day 2 and 3 years ago seing over 30 deer on each occasion, this yera i saw 3 on opening day. . . .

Terriable situation.... Maybe i was just having some bad luck did get a buck and doe . but seen less deer......

The percentage of 2.5 bucks that will not be AR legal came from the PGC antler buck survey which is available in the 2002 annual repot on the PGC site. It did not account for the effects of the 4 pt. zone where around 25% of 2.5+ buck weren't AR legal. BTW, remember those 2.5 buck included all bucks 2.5 and older.

The mortality figure came from a letter from B, Wallingford,PGC, explaining the 8% herd reduction in 2001.

Mortality from the antlered buck study was lower ,but those studies were conducted in low traffic areas.

It is impossible to have a 1:1 B/D ratio with our current regulations. At 1:1 with 1 M deer we would have 500K adult buck and and 500K doe. With our curent regs the buck harvest would be over 300K and the doe would not produce enough BB to replace the buck that were harvested.