andesman

I have spent over 20 years hunting in Pa mostly huntington, bedford, fulton and adams. I have good places to hunt in MD and see many more deer and bigger bucks there. I have taken 2 p&y bucks and several other 3 yr olds there.

I laud Mr. Alt for his efforts. But, one serious mistake I am hearing on message boards and dozens of aquaintainces is the AR is to blame.. While people do tend to focus on antlerless deer. The problem in PA is its liberal doe harvest! It IS NOT ANTLER RESTRICTIONS! The country is looking at Pa as an example and I am worried about this reflecting bad on AR. The PGC has clearly underestimated the power of the pa hunter to find, drive out and kill
deer!
Suprisingly I have 5 friends who killed the biggest buck of there life this year in pa, on both private and public land! I personally saw what may be the largest racked buck alive in the wild in Pa! Will score over 150, with 7" drop tine! While hunting in pa I saw 3 deer in 5 days.. That's on public land near my home. I have hunted over 30 days hunting in MD this year. I have seen avg. of 30 deer per day in MD this whole week of rifle.

So, Pa please micromanage your resources! Private and public need different laws. END the 20 days of high power weapondry hunting of does! End the the DMAP tags on public land! And please end the poaching of the 2.5 yr old buck off peoples back porches.

rem700man

wayyyyyyyy too many does being shot in certain areas,,,i agree whole heartedly that micro managing needs to be put in place. i just got home from a week in southern clinton co. i sat in my treestand from 5:45am until 5:15 pm everyday & saw 16 deer in 6 days. very little shooting on monday & then tuesday all hell broke loose,,,i think guys tried to shoot a buck on monday & then when they couldnt see a buck they went out tuesday & just shot whatever moved. and,,,whats worse,,,the guys that had 4 doe tags will be the 1st ones bitchin for the next 3 years that they aint seein any bucks,,or for that matter DEER IN GENERAL. i saw one fawn this week all by itself. no way was i gonna use a doe tag!

chickory

Remember Dr. Alts plan IS doe harvests.

That is what will get numbers down to what the habitat will support. As he said repeatedly, yet hunters chose to forget, Penna has twice as many deer as the habitat will support. And harvesting bucks alone will not reduce the herd. Overharvesting does will.

AR was not even proposed in Dr. alts plan in Pa, until he and the staff realized that hunters wanted something in return for their sacrifices of cutting thier own herd by half. It was a carrot to get you to do what you would normally not want done, shoot more does and reduce your own herd. He promised loudly it would produce 'bigger bucks' and it will, but he quietly said there would be less of them. He has repeatedly said in the PGC meetings you better get used to seeing less deer. THAT IS THE PLAN.

Hunters only watched the rack waving, and discounted the effects of herd reductions that are not temporary in pa. Dr. Alt says its going to stay small for the sake of the forest. To allow it to grow large again would only be repeating the mistakes of the past.

If anyone is still thinking it was for "better hunting", then you got punk'd.

In penna. herd reduction to save the ecosystem is the plan, AR was just a convenient tool to get it done.

You won't micromanage anything when HR gets to the 12dpsm that is our goal. (by the way in case you aren't following along Pa is at 15dpsm today).

As dr. Alt said at the meeting. "get used to seeing less deer"

thecontractor

Let's not kids ourselves here in thinking that Dr. Alt and the PGC is doing this to improve the ecosystem. I'm not a wildlife biologist by any means by I am quite confident that I have spent enough time in the woods to know that our forests were not in trouble because of the PA deer herd. Our forests are in trouble because of humans. Big companies are moving in and the deer and other wildlife are being slaughtered because of it. Land developers are continuously buying up land and building wal-marts, lowes, etc etc. I have an uncle in allegheny county that sais that the deer come right into the housing developement to forage on ornamental plants that are not even native to PA.......... that means that the deer are being driven to eat plants that aren't even natural to their diet. I see no need for a wal-mart to be built 10 miles away from each other. In a 30 mile radius, their are two wal-marts already and they are building another one........................ and i live in the MOUNTAINS where developement should be nil. It's crazy, and that's why our forests can't handle the deer population. Which I'm sorry I have yet to see a starving deer in my kneck of the woods. I have lots more to say but it would take all day for me to type it. I'm very very angry right now so I'll give it a few days. Also I would like to add that there is one more week left of rifle season but I won't be stepping another foot in the woods this year to harvest a deer.

Pa.Frank

Contractor, it's not much different in the east end of the state, but if you spend as much time in the woods as you claim to then you should notice the effects of overbrowsing. Take a walk in the woods in early spring and look for oak saplings. The squirrels have been planting acorn (what there are of them) all fall but you won't find any. They become deer salad before they get a foot tall. The forrests need time to regenerate. Where I hunted 30 years ago was a good mix of oak, maple, beech, ash, cherry and poplar trees. I can take you into the same area today and most of the oaks have died off, and all I see now is Maples and a few Cherrys . Deer don't eat maples and they produce no mast for wildlife. I say we give it a couple more years before we start complaining.

deaddeer

Maples , especially red maples ,are a preferred brows species , but yet are replacing oaks in many areas simply because the site conditions are better for maples and maples grow faster.


How low should we let the buck harvest go before we voice our displeasure? The last time the buck harvest was below 142K was 1986. should we wait until thosands of hunters quit because they are not seeing deer? Will you be willing to hunt when there only 19 PS DPSM ?

andesman

[[b]Contractor, it's not much different in the east end of the state, but if you spend as much time in the woods as you claim to then you should notice the effects of overbrowsing. Take a walk in the woods in early spring and look for oak saplings. The squirrels have been planting acorn (what there are of them) all fall but you won't find any. They become deer salad before they get a foot tall. The forrests need time to regenerate. Where I hunted 30 years ago was a good mix of oak, maple, beech, ash, cherry and poplar trees. I can take you into the same area today and most of the oaks have died off, and all I see now is Maples and a few Cherrys . Deer don't eat maples and they produce no mast for wildlife. I say we give it a couple more years before we start complaining.


I have noticed that oaks did not sprout in those drought yrs of late 90s. Now with recent rains they are everywhere! On some of my MD farms we have 50 deer PSM. and the forest is not overbroused. We have been amazed by the carrying capacity of the land. With soybean, corn, wheat, hay, even some clover plots. But what helps the most is over grown abandoned fields with multiflor roses and honeysuckle. They do well there all winter. But the mountains away from fields is very different. However the 5-10 psm on PGC lands is wrong.. I live close to a few test browse fenced areas and there are so few deer there is no difference inside and out. I suppose when the indians were here and whitetail and elk pops were very high the forest were destroyed? There was little farming and even fields back then, just forest mostly pine.

MikeE51848

The reason for this is forest canopy (lack of sunlight) and acid rain.

thecontractor

i don't know about the eastern half of the state but where i live, the oak trees are doing just fine and the saplings are everywhere and the interesting thing is, we have minimal farmland here. that theory is bogus........... and yes it's only a theory.

chickory

Isn't it kind of funny to be going backwards and looking at the habitat issue after we have been moving foward for 5 years on Dr. Alts version of scientific deer management without a habitat study. Not very scientific is it?

No habitat study was done in Pa by the PGC at all prior to making its rule changes, so there may be some merit to saying taht the "Pa forests are on the verge of collapse" theory of Dr. Alt was a bit of hype. I remember when he said in harrisburg at the Conference on deer overabundance that "there has not been a tree regenerate north of rt 80 in the last 80 years..." ??? Now that was one of his worst exagerations since he took over.

Pa took the word of US Forestry Service personell out of hte NE station Like Susan Stoudt, and the foresters of DCNR to justify the move from our deer population of approx. 30 deer per sq mile that we had in pa when AR/HR started - to our current 'goal' of 12dpsm in pa.

Habitat, according to Dr. Alt is the measuring stick to say when have too many deer in pa, yet he never launched a study for Pa... ?

Dcnr is now saying they will 'partner' with the PGC and begin to study the habitat. So if the PGC does agree to start, we will now be faced with having the eco-extrmemists of DCNR telling the PGC what is too many deer for the habitat. Why does that not make me feel better ?? It makes me a bit queasy to think that DCNR's partnership is going to dictate what is sufficient habitat and what is not.

Anyone else feel a bit of trepidation about that one.....???


Dr. Alt said at the beginning "it is far better to overharvest than to underharvest...." and that is true if you own a timber company, but if you are a hunter and you have to go 4-6 years with no success then its not so hot. It shows where Dr. Alts motivations are though. Err on the side of big business, not traditional hunters and their families.

Maybe the important questions on habitat should have been answered at the beginning of the process, and not 5 years after the changes started...?