Bear, nice to meet ya!! I live less than 10 minute from you, and know the exactly were you are hunting, and compared to lancaster co. we do have alot of deer!! We dont have as many Amish!!LOL. Your hunting near Wantz's & and the Wizard ranch ( A huge Boy scout camp), I grew up hunting and spoting the Hellam area, That area is unique, it is all private land, ( unless the water co. started giving out permits again) Wantz has a huge farm and manages his farm for hunting, only uses his crop damage tags to harvest barron doe's, I use to Hunt the Wizard ranch but when I was 17 they closed it to hunting and I dont blame them, because of the trash left by hunters each and every year. Then you add in the very steep hills bordering the river and you a very good area. I hunt all over York co. but I spend most of my time hunting my cousins farm in Dover, Rocky Ridge and the River Hills in the southern part of the county. If you want to get together and go spoting sometime give me a shout.
BT., I plan on doing a little scouting out your way in a few area'sPike

Be glad to point ya in the right general direction! Lotsa deer here but ya gotta promise not to shoot our BB's

I'm still waiting for the report that shows 2.5 + buck will be bigger due to AR's. Of course I know you can't produce it so you want to turn this thread into your personal chatroom instead.

Dont have one, didnt claim to...

I stand by that. I also have never gotten a response as to why so many of Gary Alt's peers are supportive of his work while the resistance is coming mostly from those that are basically uneducated, self proclaimed experts with no little or no real life experience in the field of wildlife management


Thought this board was for EXCHANGE between hunters. Take a chill pill, have a beer, count to ten, blast up a box of ammo, or do whatever but lighten up

While some of Alt's peers support the concepts and theories behind Alt's plan , none of his peers have commented on Alt's plan to reduce the herd by 50% and I would bet there isn't one deer manager in the US that would agree that our herd has to be reduced to 13 DPSM.

Furthermore ,many of Alt's peers do not agree that AR is a good way to improve the age structure of the buck herd. Brian Kinkel is against statewide AR's, John Ozoga says they are a temporary solution and Steve Demaris says they may result in high grading and have a negative effect on genetics and many states have revoked their AR restrictions because they didn't produce the desired results . In Oregon it actually decreasesd the average age of their buck because it put so much hunting pressure on their older buck..

Surely you don't expect us to swallow the implication that AR would put more pressure on older bucks here?

This is a perfect example of your willingness to use "facts" that don't have relevance here in Pa to "prove" your point. I can't imagine that any reasonable person could ever accept that AR is going to put MORE pressure on Pennsylvania's older bucks, as you imply here, when we previously were putting way to much hunting pressure on ALL antlered bucks.

Lets just be clear on a few things. First, do you agree or disagree that there was too much pressure on antlered deer before AR.

If your answer is no, fine, we simply disagree on one of the foundations for the current strategy and it's your right to be wrong

If the answer is yes how would you solve things considering PA's hunter demographics, habitat, landowner issues etc ???

Oh and maybe you ought to remind us what education and experience you have in the field of wildlife management.

Even Alt stated that AR increased the pressure on 2.5+ stats and the harvet stats prove that fact beyond a doubt. In 2001 we harvested 43.9K ,2.5+ buck and that increased to 52.6K in 2002 even though none of those 8.7K additional 2.5 buck were saved by AR. Then in 2003 we harvested 62K of the 80K buck we carried over from 2002. With just 10% non-hunting mortality ,that would mean we harvested 86% of our 2.5+ buck.

No , I do not agree that harvesting 80% of our PS buck prior to AR was a problem. There has never been a study that documented any negative effects from harvesting 80% of our PS buck. breeding rates are as high as can be expected , dominant breeding still occurred and Alt said there was no problem with the gene pool.

What are your credentials to question my credibility when you can't produce any independent studies to support your position?

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While it is easy to make a statement like that ,it is impossible to support it with facts . in 2003 we harvested 142K buck and we harvested 86% of the buck that were carried over from 2002 which means there were not a lot of additional AR legal buck to be harvested. Archers harvested 31K buck ,which left 111 K AR leagl buck for 900K rifle hunters. Now if only 20% of those 900K hunters were "decent" hunters that could harvest an AR legal buck every year as you claim, they would have harvest 118K buck and there wouldn't have been any buck left for the other 700K hunters. However , I think we will all agree that a fair number of buck are taken by the average Joe that only hunts a few days a year ,so I think it is pretty clear that due to AR, even decent hunters are only going to harvest a buck once every 5 or 6 years and those numbers will increase as the herd is reduced.

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