R.S.B.

“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”


No it wasn’t the wildlife management professionals of the Game Commission that were demanding that hunters only be allowed one or two deer back in those past years. I know what it was because I was right there listening to demands of the hunters and the State Legislature that the Game Commission reduce the number of antler less licenses.

Anyone who spends enough time researching the old Game Commission deer management reports and minutes, from the past, would figure out that the only reason the Game Commission didn’t start controlling the over population of deer many decades before they did was because every time they tried the hunters and State Legislators threw a fit, much like they are doing right now.

I was at a meeting where a high powered politician made the statement that if the Game Commission didn’t reduce the antler less harvests they would take their regulator powers away and they would decide how many license to issue. But, he was really only acting on the snotting and whining he was hearing from the hunters. So, don’t even try to tell me I don’t know what the real problem was.

The problem that allowed the deer habitat to become so degraded occurred because the hunters demanded it being that way. And, they are doing it again right now, with many of you being part of the problem that will almost certainly lead to even fewer deer in even more areas of the state in the future.



Even though the Game Commission did issue red tags to qualified farmers that allowed hunters to kill a lot deer you have that pretty much all wrong too.

Farmers in Pennsylvania, through legislative authority, can pretty much kill any and every deer that walks onto their fields any time of the year they want to. The farmers used to make demands of the State Legislature that the Game Commission fix their problem of crop damage. The Game Commission pretty much did fix that crop damage problem by allowing hunters the opportunity to do what the farmers were already doing.

Would it have been better to allow the farmer to kill all those deer instead of hunters?

I agree though that solving the over population of deer for farmers though probably was a mistake, but not for the reason hunters think it was a mistake. It was a mistake because the farmers screaming about too many to the State Legislature used to counter the screaming from the hunters that there weren’t enough deer. When the Game Commission gave the Farmers the tools, red tags, to solve their problem they no longer screamed at the Legislature. Once the Farmers stopped screaming the only ones screaming were the hunters and the Legislature soon forgot about the screaming of the farmers used to cancel out the screaming from the hunters so they too jumped on the more deer bandwagon, even in the farm land. At least before red tags the Legislature was only demanding more deer in the forested areas. That is why the forested areas of the state are the areas with destroyed habitat today, but in the future the habitat in the small woodlots that surround the farmland might also be destroyed with more and more farmers dropping out of farming and no longer demanding fewer deer or getting red tags.

That is why solving the Farmer’s damage problems might have been a mistake that leads to fewer deer for the future, unless we can get people, hunters, better educated on the deer/habitat relationshipthat really influence the future deer populations.

R.S. Bodenhorn

R.S.B.

Back when those camps were all filled with hunters it was because the deer populations were limited to the areas of only about half of the state. Those hunters that lived in areas where there were few deer had to travel to the half of the state that had to deer if they wanted to hunt for deer.
Also back in the old days we didn’t have the easy transportation we have today. Many hunters loaded all their hunting gear in a couple of cars and headed of to the big woods to spend several days to maybe all week at the hunting camp.

Those were the good ole days, but what changed that was more deer not fewer deer. That is correct, what changed all that was increased deer populations in the areas where all of those hunters once came from to fill those big woods hunting camps. As the deer populations increased in the areas closer to home the hunter no longer needed to travel to the big woods hunting camp to have quality hunting.

That shift in where hunters were hunting is also part of what caused both the reduction in deer sightings and deer harvests in the old traditional big woods areas and what actually requires multiple antler less deer license in those still hunting in those big woods areas today.

I can remember being on deer stand when it turned daylight the first morning of deer season back in those old days and wondering if it would even be possible to shoot at a deer because of there being a hunter in any direction you could look out through the woods. Soon there were deer running everywhere because there was no place in the entire darn woods for a deer to stand that someone wasn’t looking and probably even shooting at them. With the spreading of the state’s deer hunters over the entire state I can now stand in those same big woods area on the opening day of the season and never see another hunter. You don’t see deer running around in a panic all day, like they used to though, because they can just leisurely walk to a safe area and bed down or stand around in some cover all day where no hunters are disturbing them. Now hunters have to hunt the deer on the deer’s terms if they are going to be successful instead of just sitting and waiting for herds of deer to run up to them every half hour or so.

What really changed in the old traditional camp areas was from a shift in where hunters were hunting a lot more then any change in the deer populations. That shift in hunter densities also affected the number deer sightings in the big woods and remote areas though. That lack of hunters in the old traditional big woods areas also reduced the big woods deer harvests which then lead to the increased habitat damage and eventual crash in deer populations.

Hunters might not like to believe those facts but that is what has happened whether hunters want to believe it or not. I know, I have been right here in the big woods not only watching it but studying it for the past half century and a bit longer.

R.S. Bodenhorn

bluebird2

That simply is not true. During the 70's there were around 40 OWDPSM in the NC counties. That resulted in a PS density of around 70 DPSM. The PSDD in 2005 in 2G was only 12 DPSM. That is over an 80% reduction in the herd that was the result of harvests that exceeded recruitment for many years. That is why it only takes 29K doe tags and a harvest of 3.8 DPSM to keep the herd stable in 2G. At the same time similar habitat in 2F was supporting 24 PS DPSM and in 2008 it took a harvest of 6.67 deer to keep the herd stable. There is simply no reason why the habitat in 2G can't support as many deer as in 2F, but for some unknown reason the pGC will not allow it to happen.

J Pike

RSB we actually agree on some thing!! I have always believed that farmers and other land owners (timber co.'s, nurserys etc.) should be able to harvest as many deer on their lands as they see fit. With the only regulation being that the meat gets donated and does not go to waste. Pike

R.S.B.

The fact is that you, nor anyone else, really knows how many deer there REALLY were during any of those time periods you hang your whole premise on. Those were estimated numbers based entirely on working backwards from hunter harvests. As the hunter harvests increased or decreased it greatly changed the ESTIMATED over winter as well preseason deer population estimates and for many of those years and entire decades were wrong, sometimes way wrong.

That is exactly the reason those estimated numbers are no longer the major factor in determining the direction to go with deer harvests and instead REAL measures of the herd health and food supply are used.

Those old estimated numbers were not reliable enough to use the way you want to hang your hat and play all of your cards on. They were simply estimates and very subject to being wrong and not a good management measuring stick.

You are undoubtedly correct though that there were more deer in the 70s. The thing you totally fail to understand or acknowledge though is that in many areas of the state the deer herd has GREATLY reduced its own numbers over the years since then because we continuously carried too many deer during that time period all the way up through the years until the herd crashed from a lack of over winter habitat.

I know it isn’t want you want to believe, but that is the truth of the matter even if it doesn’t fit your agenda and misinformation objectives.

R.S. Bodenhorn

R.S.B.

Though I agree with farmers, nursery and large forest land owners being able to have the tools to control deer populations to levels that are consistent with their business objectives I also think we need to use caution by keeping hunters as the actual management tool they can use.
In other words we need to allow the hunters the tools on those lands to control the deer populations in cooperation with the landowners. I think both red tag (only on farm lands) and DMAP on forest lands goes along way toward providing those tools.

What I don’t want to see is forested landowners being permitted to kill deer for damage like farmers can legally do. If large forest landowners had the right to kill for damage they could use their employees to kill deer in one week of the year with spotlights then hunters kill during the entire season. At that point the landowners that really do harbor the deer year round would no longer need hunters at all. We would then see more land closed to public hunting, more hunters crowded onto public land and even more disparity of hunter harvests across much of the large forested lands of our state.

In other words we all need to work with those landowners toward finding the tools that hunters can use to help them control the deer numbers to meet their business and land management objectives. The Game Commission has been trying to work with them to help improve the future for hunting and hunters, it would be a lot better if more hunters understood that and learned more about working together instead of trying to tear down the work that has already been accomplished to make a better future for hunting.

R.S. Bodenhorn

BTBowhunter

Cant speak for 2G in rifle season but that description fits 2F like a glove over the last several years. Long before AR/HR the shift began toward more and more hunters hunting closer to home around here. IMHO reduced sightings in rifle season in 2F is far more a result of less hunters than less deer.These days in archery and early muzzy in 2F, whenwe hunt the deer on their own terms, we enjoy deer sightings that areabout par equal to 10 and 20 years ago. The only noticeable difference in deer sightings comes on the gun season opener because the human activity that used to send deer bouncing all through the woods all day long no longer exists.

BTBowhunter

Yup.

Hunters that continue to position themselves asadversaries instead of cooperatorswithtimber property owners are shoting themselves in the foot, the timber interests will eventually give up on utilizing hunters as a tool and do exactly what RSB has suggested. We need to remember that we are their guests and we will get tossedif the day comes where we bring more grief than benefitto those that provide food and habitat to the deer.

Think hunting access is tough now? just keep crying for more deer. It's going to continue to get tougher and tougher to find huntable places every year.

BTW, many of those states mentioned as having far higher success rates already have very limited public access. If you want to hunt in the south or the midwest, you better own some land, have family who does, or pay big $$ to belong to a club.

bluebird2

That simply is not true! When the PGC claimed the herd in 2G increased by 40% in 2006 they increased the doe tags from 16K to 29K. If they were using herd health and forest health 2F and 2G would be managed at the same DD, but their not.
That isn't even close to being true. After the herds crashed in the late 70's due to severe winter weather the population in the NC counties increased and that is why they needed 52K doe tags in 2003 and a harvest of 20K doe to reduce the herd in 2G. Now it only takes 29K tags and a harvest of 6,500 doe to keep the herd stable. That's a harvest of only 2.21 antlerless deer PSM which is the worst in the state.

yano

From the George Washington and Jefferson National Forests Website:
""The totals for the combined George Washington and Jefferson National Forests are 1,646,328 acres in Virginia; 123,384 acres in West Virginia; and 961 acres in Kentucky.""

Virginia also has, State Forest lands, Game & Fish Commision Wildfile Management Area lands, and Military Bases where Hunting is also permitted.