ButchA

Wow... I've been reading more and more stuff on that link, and then going back to the PA's PGC website, VA's DGIF website, and even NY's DEC website.

My main question is What happened to PA? Guys... your state used to be legendary. I mean, people who don't even hunt know about deer hunting in PA!

I checked New York's figures too and they don't look that impressive either: (I'm heading to NY State this coming season to deer hunt!)

New York State
Land size: 54,555 sq miles.
Population: 19,490,297(...and I bet if you chop off NY City,the state population would be 9,490,297)
Number of resident hunters in NY: 491,000
2008 deer harvest: 222,979
Money spent by hunters in NY: $788 million

Success rate in New York = = = = 45%

R.S.B.

What do you mean what happened to Pennsylvania?

Even though Pennsylvania has over protected it’s deer herd to the point the habitat was damaged and the deer population crashed in many areas it is still a national leader in the both deer populations and deer harvests.
The only reason Pennsylvania doesn’t have a higher hunter success rate is because of the fact Pennsylvania still has WAY more hunters competing for the deer then most other states.

The number of resident hunters for those three states has just been posted along with the harvests for each of those states. But, if you are going to look at hunter success rates you also have to understand that if Pennsylvania had as few hunters as those other states there would be a lot more deer per hunter and of course the hunter success rate would improve.

I am going to post the number of hunters and the deer harvests for each of those states in per square mile of land mass data so everyone can see just how many more hunters and deer harvested Pennsylvania actually has.

State………………….Hunters/sq. mile……………….Deer harvest/sq. mile
Pa……………………….20.8.…………… ………………7.49
Va……………………….8.9.……………⠀¦â€¦â€¦â€¦â€¦â€¦.6.41
NY……………………..10.4.……………†¦â€¦â€¦â€¦â€¦â€¦.4.72

As you can see Penna. Not only leads the three in hunters but also in deer harvests.

Now lets put the hunter success rates into some comparable perspective. Let’s look at the success rates of those other states if you were to put all of Pennsylvania’s hunters in there competing to get the same deer harvest as they had last year.

Last year the Penna. Hunters had a 36% success rate.

The Virginia hunter success rate, last year, was 72%. But if you were to put all of Penna’s hunters there to get that same harvest the success rate would have only been 27%.

New York hunters had a 45% success rate, but if all of Pa’s hunters had been there the success rate would only have been 24%.

So, based on the real apples to apples comparisons Pennsylvania does still have one of the best deer state’s in the nation. Pennsylvania just has more hunters competing for all of it’s deer and that means not everyone can get a deer every year.

It is also true that many areas of Pennsylvania once had more deer then are present today. The reason there aren’t more deer in those areas today is simply that hunters demanded more deer then the habitat could sustain for long the habitat became so degraded it couldn’t support many deer. Thus the deer population in some of those areas crashed and is only slowly starting to recover the past year or two.

There is nothing wrong with the hunting in Pennsylvania other then the Commission spent way too many years listening to hunter demands instead of the information the deer and their habitat were providing. Fortunately that has started to change and we have a brighter future for both the deer and deer hunter ahead.

R.S. Bodenhorn

ButchA

RSB,

Thanks for the info. I guess I should have expanded on the question "What happend to PA?" that I originally asked...

See, PA has always been legendary for deer hunting. I remember my dad telling me stories of IBM executives from Poughkeepsie, NY (where I grew up) whowould take a week or two vacation and go to PA to go deer hunting. Every single one of them brought home a deer. But then, that was back in the old days, the "old school" hunter days. That was way back when I was just akid, you know? Back then, PA probably had a massive deer herd that is nothing compared to what it is today.

bluebird2

That simply is not true. In WMU 2G where the herd has been reduced the most,was at it's goal DD in 1999 before the current plan was implemented Despited the fact that the herd was at its goal of 15 DPSM in 1999 the herd was reduced to 8-9 DPSM in 2008 and the forest health was still rated as poor. The simple fact is that the herd in 2G has been below the MSY carrying capacity of the habitat since 1980.

ButchA

Bluebird, didn't the PGC have some sort of bizarre "kill 'em all" policy a few years ago? I mean, I'm not slamming on PA or the PGC or anything like that... I just remember hearing something about the PGC (somebody named Gary Alt?) handing out tags and doe permits like they were candy. Then, next thing you know, PA had massive deer carnage... everybody got a deer, and/or multiple deer!

R.S.B.

You have no idea what has really happened. Reality isn’t written in what you are reading, but it is evident to those of us that have spent decades living in the units and studying what has been occurring. You have no idea has been occurring because you have not set one foot on any 2G soil in decades.

The fact is the deer populations in unit 2G have been far below what they could have been, if had hunters allowed proper deer management decades ago, for a long time. The deer populations in unit have been rising and declining based on the environmental conditions for decades but generally slowly declining.

Then following the back to back harsh winters of 2002/2003 and 2003/2004 the deer populations crashed because of having two years of very few surviving fawns. That crash though really had little to do with the deer herd numbers at the time of those hard winters. That crash could only have been avoided if the deer populations had been reduced enough long before those hard winters so the winter grounds habitat could have sustained the over wintering deer in a healthy condition.

The fact is that deer populations in the northern tier and mountainous regions of the state are always going to be influenced and partially controlled by the winter and other environmental conditions. No one can change that fact even though we could support a lot more deer if we control the deer populations enough to allow the habitat to recover. Once the habitat recovers the deer numbers will also improve. If the habitat doesn’t recover there will never be more deer for more then short term periods of ideal environmental conditions.

R.S. Bodenhorn

R.S.B.

No, the Game Commission didn’t have any such type of policy. They did start reducing a deer herd that was way too high for the habitat in many areas about eight to ten years ago though.

The problem was that they waited too long to start the herd reduction and the over abundant deer herd had already severely damaged their own food supply. The increased harvests, though were very much needed, didn’t come in time to prevent the herd from crashing due to the lack of having enough winter habitat to sustain even the reduced deer numbers through two back to back harsh winters.



Actually you heard wrong and most likely from people that didn’t have enough real facts to have any idea what really was happening. The antler less license allocations have never been too high for good deer management though there have been many, many years in many areas were the number of licenses has been way too low to adequately control the deer populations and protect the deer food supply.

Doctor Alt understood that, while many hunters never did and many never will.


Actually the deer harvests in the areas with the least deer today did not have deer harvests that were any higher then they had traditionally been. The areas that experienced the increased harvests back then were the areas where the deer populations had been rapidly increasing and those areas still have high deer numbers. In fact the areas of the state with the most deer today are the very areas where antler less deer harvests have been unlimited for the past twenty years.

The areas of the state with twenty years of unlimited antler less license and harvests still have high deer harvests and high deer populations.
Those areas with unlimited harvests have to have sharp shooters out there killing huge numbers of deer at night just to control the populations.

Meanwhile those areas of the state were the hunters have spent decades demanding fewer and fewer license and doe harvests now have destroyed habitat, very low deer harvests and also very low deer populations.

It should be about time for the hunters to wake up to the fact that they would be a lot better off if they allowed the professionals to manage the resources instead of listening to those hunters that refuse to learn from all of the past deer management mistakes they have forced with repeatedly making the same stupid demands that are proven not to work as they think they do.

R.S. Bodenhorn

ButchA

R.S.B.

Thank you for setting the record straight. I was always wondering about PA - and heard too many conflicting rumors.

yano

Since your say your into "real apples to apples comparisons",
let's remove PA's 60% non-reporting fudge factor from the equation and adjust PA's Deer Harvest/Square Mile to match VA's and NY's actual reported data. Now the results would look like:

State………………….Hunters/sq. mile……………….Deer harvest/sq. mile
Va……………………….8.9.……………⠀¦â€¦â€¦â€¦â€¦â€¦.6.41
NY……………………..10.4.……………†¦â€¦â€¦â€¦â€¦â€¦.4.72
Pa……………………….20.8.…………… ……………….4.35

One could as just easily add PA's 60% non-reporting fudge factor to both VA's and NY's reported data totals. The numbers would change, but the harvest ranking order would still be the same.

rem700man

ButchA:
R.S.B didnt really set anything straight,,,and i intend to point out a few holes in his theories that do not sit well with me.


There is nothing wrong with the hunting in Pennsylvania other then the Commission spent way too many years listening to hunter demands instead of the information the deer and their habitat were providing. Fortunately that has started to change and we have a brighter future for both the deer and deer hunter ahead

The above quote by R.S.B is a crock of chit,,and let me tell you why:
Pre herd reduction years when deer were running everywhere you were allowed to kill 1 deer with a single liscense purchase,,,then if you were lucky enough to go thru the hassle to fill out a doe permit ,,,send it in on time,,,,have it filled out so completely that it made you half nuts wondering if everything was right,,,and then get your permit mailed back to you saying it was ok to kill a doe you could start hunting,,,kill your 2 deer ,,,and hang the gun up for the year! Hunter demands had nothing to do with the deer being overpopulated,,,it was PGC greed protecting the deer that lead to over-population. The PGC proudly posted deer per square mile #'s in every hunting book and magazine known to men to attract hunters to the state. Not one hunter pre HR that i ever new of both resident and non resident didnt want to kill more deer per year and the hassle of getting your liscense straight every year eveen lead alot of guys to killing more deer than allowed to and in turn those deer never got reported as taken

Heres his answer to a question you asked about handing out tags and creating a deer slaughter

Actually you heard wrong and most likely from people that didn’t have enough real facts to have any idea what really was happening. The antler less license allocations have never been too high for good deer management though there have been many, many years in many areas were the number of licenses has been way too low to adequately control the deer populations and protect the deer food supply.

Doctor Alt understood that, while many hunters never did and many never will.

Now here you didnt actually hear anything wrong,,,you heard right! The Pgc handed out red tags to every farmer that wanted them for crop damage and boy did these tags ever get misused! Misused to the point where i dont even know if my facts are straight on the proper use of them so i wont claim to have any knowledge on the "proper use",,,but i will tell you my knowledge on how they got used. Guys were sitting in farmers fields shooting every friggin deer that hit the fields for months in the spring the years that this red tagging was taking place,,,they used the tag to get the deer home and in the freezer and then the next day that tag was being used again. So if a farmer got we'll say 20 tags to use for crop damage,,,i know of certain circumstances where 100 deer were killed with those 20 tags. If you read back over rsb's answer,,,he's right when he says that most hunters didnt realize what was happening and that doc. alt did understand because doc. alt knew that if he gave the hunters enough rope to hang themselves they would,,,he played on hunter greed and he was right! This same area that im talkin about had massive deer slaughters taking place at the same time by the Amish community for the same reason,,,all labeled as crop damage,,,it was a "free for all" and thus you end up with a shot out herd like Pa. is experiencing right now. Im sure someone will try to persuade you differently by providing some kind of fictictous #'s,,,and if that happens,,,you would have to ask,,,,what kind of mathmatical equation did you use to account for the #'s of deer being killed that were never reported. I have to quit now because it's sunday morning and i should attend church to ask forgiveness for all the cussing i have done already this morning typing this response