[duane]

spent 5 days hunting saw 4 deer the 1st day then nothing. game commission says i need to get further off the road. i said you mean 13 miles isnt enough. the first saturday i heard 3 shots all day in the allegheny national forest. found a bow shot buck today that was not recovered.

is anyone else doing any better

 

[Mike Buchanan]

I was out for deer on 5 different days and saw 3 squirrels!

 

[PAShooter]

Very few deer seen this season. The places that seem to have deer are not hunting areas, posted or too close to safety zones. I too have hunted far from road access, and without quesstion the population is DOWN. I will break out the old flintlock in hopes of success.

 

[kudu40]

Friends have been doing the QDM thing on over 2500 acres of private land for about 15 years. Most of them hunted all of the first week and at least a few of them hunted both weeks. The second Saturday saw everyone plus guests. They put on drives starting the second day of the season. They killed one buck and didnt even see any more. They did see turkeys on every drive. The Game Commission says there isnt enough food to sustain more deer. The turkeys are decimating the mast crop just about everywhere and are pushing the grouse to endangered levels. I think its about time to increase the limits for turkey to at least one a day, either sex.

Kudu40

 

[Irv S]

Only hunted 1 week of rifle deer season in Pennsylvania. The deer are still scarce near my farm, but not quite as scarce as the last few years. Didn't see any until 3 does on Friday and then 6 does on the first Saturday. The 6 stood at about 60 yards and I let them walk (as I have since they became scarce) even though I've had antlerless tags. More hunters are finally realizing that the herd is too low and does should not be shot until the herd recovers. I didn't hear any shots during the early muzzle-loader/senior rifle antlerless season this year which occurs in the middle of archery season. The height of the soybean plants in the fields adjacent to the woods seems to be a good indicator of deer population size. When the deer were plentiful 10 years ago the plants were eaten almost to the ground out to about 50 or 60 yards, now the deer damage is hard to find.

The turkeys are very plentiful, but I'm not sure I'd go as far as 1 per day either sex. I think the spring season should remain bearded turkeys only, but with a higher season limit without the required extra license and the fall should be 1 per day either sex with perhaps a 5 or 6 bird limit.

The PGC declared much of my farm and the neighbor's farms a pheasant recovery area closed to pheasant and didn't even have the decency to tell the landowners.

 

[kdub]

Dang, Irv - sounds pretty high handed to me! Always thought game commissions and the landowners were supposed to work together on these things. Maybe the next step is to tell landowners they can't post their own lands!

 

[CowboyGunNut]

Pretty much the same story with me. I didn't get out until the second week, and then I hunted 3 days. Didn't see a deer but I did see a flock of turkeys for the first time ever while hunting deer in this area.

I used to see a fair amount of deer, including some really nice bucks, on the farms around my home. The only buck I've seen this year was a road kill on my way to work.

 

[CowboyGunNut]

Got out for a few hours this morning to do some muzzleloader hunting. I saw 5 does run by which is the first I've actually seen deer in a few years while hunting them. I've still hardly seen any around my house, which is unusual.

 

[Irv S]

Dang, Irv - sounds pretty high handed to me! Always thought game commissions and the landowners were supposed to work together on these things. Maybe the next step is to tell landowners they can't post their own lands!

They've already been doing that to landowners who want the landowner preference for the antlerless license drawings, so I never claimed the preference.

Non-residents landowners not claiming the preference must wait until the drawings are open to residents for a week before they can apply. Some residents feel even stricter restrictions should be on nonresidents, including landowners. My attitude is I want control as to who I allow to hunt on my land and if I don't get a license, nobody hunts.

 

[MikeG]

Good grief that sounds convoluted!

 

[magnumitis]

But I thought Gary Alt fixed all the deer problems.

Surely there's a trophy buck behind every other brushpile in PA............... just like Gary promised.

 

[Sinbad12-2007]

Well, methinks that it's the increase in the squirrel population. Darn tree-rats are eating all the mast. Lots of help doing that from the turkeys. I say lets kill more tree-rats. Bloody beasts! LOL, I'm doing my part. I didn't get to go deer hunting this year but my Brother did ok. Opening day he saw 18 doe and 6 nice bucks. He got one each. Northern Michigan.

 

[ratgunner]

Hahaha I got banned from a site called HuntingPA.com for saying the things you guys are about not enough deer in PA. I even got called names by other members and I was the one who got banned. Turns out it's mostly a PGC propaganda site and many members are WCO's or just wannabe deer management experts who have a cult like following of Gary Alt.
I was told I wasnt hunting far enough from the road and that I wasnt a good hunter. And yet the majority of them hunt private land.

 

[Tnhunter]

Wow! Growing up in N.E., everyone spoke of the great deer hunting found in Pa. I sure am glad that I decided to spend my later years in Tennessee where we still have deer and a Wildlife Resource Agency that seems to do the right things.

This is not meant, at all, to be a slight to the hunters in Pa. It's meant to honestly explain how I can only imagine your pain with recent seasons after what hunting had been for many years in your fine state. Deer hunting had been so important an ingrained tradition in Pa, I can only imagine what many think of it today.

 

[ratgunner]

Whats really sad is the amount of hunters who have been brain washed into beleiving that further HR is a good thing and they want to make AR 4 points to a side statewide. When you take new young hunters out like I did the last two seasons and they see no deer it makes me sad. We will all pay for it in the near future with less hunters to help protect our sport. But they will not listen to my reasoning. Oh well when it's too late then maybe I will say to them; It's YOUR fault.

 

[kdub]

Back in the late '60's I hunted with my wife's kin for deer in central Pa around Huntingdon and bear up in north central Pa right against the New York state line.

Saw lots of deer herds with doe and youngun's and a few bucks.

What I really saw was hunters behind just about every rock and tree!

Don't suppose the hunter population grew to such an extent that the deer population coulcn't support it any more, do you?

 

[ratgunner]

I know what you mean. It was like that"a hunter behind every tree all the way up untill about the early 90's. And no sir it never seemd to have a big affect on the herd size back then because it was a buck only season for two weeks and then later a 3 day doe only season. Around the early -mid 90's it became one season of buck and doe together Heard Reduction" then came Antler Restriction" 3 to a side. It's not crowded at all now in many places...alot of older hunters gave it up and not many new young hunters getting involved. Can't say I blame them much.
Also back then I kinda stayed out of rifle season. It was too crazy,guns banging and bullets whirring by and every direction was another hunter. I didnt want to shoot anyone or be shot myself...LOL. I bow hunt mostly and muzzleloader too.

 

[KampKool]

When I first started hunting as a 12yr old kid, I would lay there all night listening to all the cars driving up the road past the cabin. Couldn't sleep anyway I was so excited to join the gang at camp.

The dirt road we hunted at looked like a city street w/ cars parked down both sides where ever they could squeeze off the road & over the ditch. You sighted guys in red walking around all day and during the two week buck season you saw herds of does walking by. The DCNR maintained the road and most of us were riding in 4x2 autos and old pickups.

Now they don't maintain the road, you need a truck and 4x4 if it snows. After the opening day there is only 4 - 5 cars along the whole 3 miles of road...

There was a total of 4 hunters at the cabin and I saw 5 deer at 9am opening morning. They were headed for the swamp down by the private land where they stay for the whole season. I shot the largest doe since the one buck was a Y buck and not legal under AR.

5 days of hunting by the 4 of us and those 5 deer were all we saw...good thing she was a nice size doe as I split the meat 4 ways.

I spent $125.00 on food and the guys chipped back in $45.00. I spent $110 on gas and thankfully I had beer home to bring.

I spent a lot of money for one freezer shelf full of venison.

1987 - 1992 we were our own problem shooting every deer the state allowed!

 

[duane]

betwwen the 70 and early 80's the average reported harvest was around 110,000 now they report 300,000 +. not hard to figure out why numbers are down. 3x as many deer taken every year.

 

[Davers]

Our Whitetail Deer Harvest (2010) was down also here in Kentucky. Some Counties (Zones) faired better than others, with most of the harvest comming from Western Kentucky. Most Counties in West Ky. are in Zone #1 which means One Buck ONLY but the Hunter can buy an unlimited number of Antlerless Tags. We had a HUGE Mast (Acorn) crop this year and also a full Moon during Rifle Season & the weather was too warm for any good Deer movement except at night. In 2007, Kentucky's Deer Herd had a widespread outbreak of EHD, which didn't help matters eather. However I've seen more Deer on my property this past year, than the previous two years.