situation in Pa..
 

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.

RE: situation in Pa..
 

I agree aint the AR's its the doe slaughter. But lets face it alt did not shoot all the does the past 2 years.the hunters did and are starting to realize they messed up.I hope next year people dont buy doe tags. i shot a doe ,but on a special hunt where only one day of hunting all year is allowed and this year we had only 16 hunters on 1100 acres. with 800 deer

RE: situation in Pa..
 

With the doe kill of the past couple years and now this year. If they dont give out less tags next year (at least on public land) The damage will take years to reverse. The deer on mountain ground do not seem to reproduce as fast as farm land. In MD on my farms most fawns get bred. In fact we are started to see them comming in heat the past couple days! In Pa if nothing changes, I predict that the 2006 hunt will be non-existent on public land away from private land! There will be no bucks or does, by that point.. Then we'll call them the "Pennsyvania Tree Commision". I respect alts knowledge of wildlife... But it's clear that they have some alterior motive if the laws dont change after this year..

RE: situation in Pa..
 

You are getting what Dr. Alt and DCNR promised. Less deer.

He said it clearly in the January meeting for 2004. And this January they are proposing more seasons and more tags to keep the reductions going. You could go to the January meeting and voice your concerns but it would just mean you lose two days off work, and it would not change anyones mind anyways. Last January after 50 hunters went to the microphone and spoke about the lack of deer sightings and poor opportunity, Dr. Alt went to the microphone and said "well we heard from 50 hunters, but there are 900,000 more who we have not heard from".

So he was not swayed at all.

His closing comment to the hunters who had spoken, as he left the podium was, "if your a hunter in Pa, you better get used to seeing less deer."

Your getting what he promised. Less deer. And big business in Pa is thrilled. Even though you are not.

RE: situation in Pa..
 

Seeing less deer doesn't bother me one bit. I've only had one day without seeing a deer, but my hunting party took 3 does on that day, so it wasn't from lack of deer. We work hard to see these deer. Everyday we hunt we sit til 9 0r 10 and set up 3 and 4 man drives for the rest of the morning. The bucks that have been harvested this year are the biggest on average than I have ever seen. Our local butcher is a friend and I am able to see what people are bringing in. I don't mind seeing less deer if the buck harvest will continue to be like this. But I do agree the the doe slaughter has to stop sometime. And I believe that when Alt gets the balance that he wants the doe tag allocations will start to decline.

RE: situation in Pa..
 

I dont think you guys understand.. These mountainous areas are getting down to 1960s levels! That is not neccesary. In 5 days hunting.. I saw one doe that was not being chased and that was the first day of archery. The amount of pressure that is being put on these few deer is shocking.. The deer sign this fall was the least I have seen anywhere since the late 60s in MD when there were few deer there. This mountain ground has less than 7 per square mile! Do not compare it with other areas of the state with small tracts of pubic land and mostly private.

When 1 of 50 hunters harvest a legal buck is that sucessful management? It is doing just what I thought it would 3 years ago, weeding out the half hearted hunters. Which is fine with me. This state just has too many hunters. I'm sure that when a kid sees only a glimpse of a running deer once a week, he will soon quit.. But for those who get the big boy they will be hooked for life. I just cant see too many of these guys killing 3 yr olds or older,with the pressure that's on those bucks, we know how smart they get.

I think the PGC, needs to devise a plan to put less pressure on large public tracts and more on private lands. I think lessons could be learned from ohio and kentucky. States that have stable herds and many more mature bucks than PA. Another thing that would help is cracking down on hunters filling others tags within a group that is common here. Also button bucks are the dumbest animals in the woods and they being wiped out by frustrated hunters.

RE: situation in Pa..
 

Its not so much the shooting of doe, the big problem in Pa. is habitat. I live 200 yards from approximately 750 acres of Game Commission land. All around this 750 acre tract is over 1500 acres of residential forest and a golf course. Hunting is restricted to the owners of the residential land and around the fringes of the golf course. How many years does it take deer to learn that bedding, feeding and traveling in these two areas is preferred over the constant pressures on the Game Lands? I'll walk through the Game Lands to get to a friends home in the development. I may see a few scattered deer on my way, but when entering the development with lots of 3 acres and larger there are deer all over the place. Many that just stand there ground and watch you walk past. My opinion is the doe hunting may reduce the population on huntable land, but choice of habitat where the game prefer to live is a bigger influence on the deer population. Concentration of not only deer, but also turkey thrive with little outside influence. With more land being developed in wooded habitats the game will migrate to this paradise for the same reason the residents of these secluded properties did, privacy and safety with little outside pressure.
Good Hunting...;)

RE: situation in Pa..
 

I agree that something needs to be done, but I don't agree with what you guys are saying.

Lets face it, the deer density in this state varies from county to county, heck, it varies from each patch of woods to another!

My hunting land here in Indiana County is finally getting to a good level. We had a deer density upwards of 50-60 deer per square mile but now it is much better! Our buck to doe ratio is right on now which is probablly why our WMU had its doe tags cut in half since last year!

Now, in archery season I would go spotting about 5 miles from my house and I could count between 70-90 deer in one field!

The problem isn't AR's, the problem isn't too many doe tags, the problem IS that they aren't handing the tags out where they need to be!

RE: situation in Pa..
 

I have hunted Huntington County for the last 9 years and this year spent the first two days there on a friends property in Mapleton Depot (between huntington and mount union). I have never seen as many bucks as I saw this year, and have seen no decrease in numbers of does. I saw 2 VERY large rack bucks in 2 days, both probably would have scored approx 110 to 120 (pretty nice for that area), I also saw one 2.5 y/o 6 pointer, and 2 other yearling bucks. I also saw approximately 15 does and fawns. I understand that this is private property, however every year for the last 100+ years there are 5-10 does taken off this property which is about 100 acres. I don't see a problem there yet and still see the same numbers as every other year, simply more bucks and bigger ones. I however do not spend time on public land to see the carnage that occurs from the out of staters and others that aren't selective. My father also owns about 75 acres in Bradford county that is the same as the spot in Huntington county in terms of numbers of total deer and bucks. As a matter of fact, I was out in the barn on Wednesday morning and at around 8:30am, and 2 eight pointers came into the field harassing a single doe in broad daylight and awfully late in the season for running does.....you never used to see bucks in daylight like this around his place before AR. Maybe my opinions would be different though if I had to hunt public property

RE: situation in Pa..
 

i agree with the hunting area thing being a factor....we get a large group of guys to drive out the larger pieces of land around here...not many deer are seen....not many there....signs there...but the deer dont stay there once the orage army is out to get them.......but when we loose the large group and have a few shooters and a few drivers and can sneak into the little holes behind houses and such we see TONS of deer and we start a war...thats where we get our deer from 75% of the time...we take a few deer in the large sets but most are laying right behind the houses......thats why i cant wait for the late flintlock season.......i know if i dont score saturday or maybe a day htis week if i got a day off work then flintlock season is when it will be....we know of alot of good bucks...legal 4pt to a side or better...just cant get them because every day random guys show up at the farm to tag along and we have more guys then we want...theres a few of us that do the drives every day we can...we dont like the big groups because we know it ruins our chances....big groups are nice to help on big drives..but thats not where the deer are....the deer numbers are down....but there still deer out there.....i like ARs..even though i passed on a buck yesterday because i couldnt tell if he was lega but i think he may have been....i think they are producing better bucks...but HR needs to slow....go back to the old doe season....or first week only or something...2 weeks of rifle hunting hammers them hard......we took enough....im not complaing...i plan to take a doe or 2 this year myself.....but not in the areas i know the numbers are WAY down......