deaddeer

Your post is a classic example of why Alt's plan has created such dissention among hunters from various areas of the state. You have experienced no herd reduction and are seeing more and bigger buck and are passing on 2.5 buck.

Now compare that to the experience of our group of six hunting in 5 C. Now don't take this as a complaint because I know I could hunt harder,hunt somewhere else ,buy land somewhere else or join a lease. However, no matter what our group does someone else has to hunt here to control the herd.

Personally,last year I did not see one antlered buck while hunting.archery, rifle and late ML season. Since the end of the season I have seen a total of 5 deer and no buck. I live where I hunt and maintain ATV trails , ditches and cut firewood on the property we hunt. I planted winter rye in 3 areas and I only saw deer feeding on it twice.

The group only saw one legal buck during early ML, rifle and late ML. We didn't see any buck that weren't AR legal and only one buck was killed in the .5 SM we hunt. We had shots at two mature doe and killed one. We had shots at seven fawns and killed six, but they were all BB.


So while Alt's plan is benefiting a small percentage of hunters in the 4 pt. zone where the herd is double and triple its OWDD goals , for the majority of the hunters it has made hunting harder and hasn't provided any benefits.

DoubleLung55

Last year , i saw alot more deer taken that were mounters , every buck i saw getting drug out of the mountains on opening day was a mounter , i didnt see quiet as many , but they were bigger , and the doe sightings were down alot , i only saw a few doe but they didnt offer shots i was comfortable with , so i think PA is coming along , but down here in 2B i have a few honey holes that we manage and are posted up , so i have all archery to take a nice buck!

livbucks

You answered your own problem. You are not seeing any legal buck because you are shooting them all as BB. Maybe you are not the only ones in the area doing this also. If you are in a heavily hunted area that gets alot of doe hunting, a huge percentage of your bucks are being killed as BB. It's no wonder! That is where my recommendation for the closer tracking of the BB kill would come in. We have got to do something more about the BB kill. If we are good hunters then I'm sure we could all be a little more thorough at assessing the deer we have in our sights. Try to hold off on doe hunting your area for a few years. I know this flies in the face of what you believe in but sometimes you can't get tunnelvision on deer density numbers in the short term. You can always weed them out in the future when your buck numbers start to rebound. As hunters, we can do alot to manage the conditions on the particular areas we hunt regardless of the goals of the GC. We are out there doing it, so the decision to shoot or not is ultimately up to us as individuals.

deaddeer

Did you miss the part of my post where I said that during early ML , Rifle and late ML our group of six only had shooting at 2 adult doe? If we had passed on those fawns there would have been 6 additional OW deer in the area we hunted. We all still had bonus tags to use at the end of the season so waiting for a mature doe was not the anwser. My wife and I did that during archery and we never got a shot at a mature doe.


That simply is not true . The PGC has been trying to control the herds in SRA counties for 20 years with no success It is very hard to harvest mature doe in an areas with posted ground and a lot of safety zones. There is no reason to have AR in SRA counties except to produce larger racks for trophy hunters and that is not good deer management and it is terrible PR for the PGC.

livbucks

I just don't get what you are trying to say.

deaddeer

I'm saying we would much rather have harvested mature doe, but we simply didn't have the opportunity. You can't shoot what you don't see ,so we shot what saw and they happened to be BB. They could just as easily been female fawns but they weren't. In rifle and late ML we don't have a chance to check for buttons ,we have a hard enough time just identifying a legal target and making a clean kill.

livbucks

What are you looking for in a deer hunting experience?
Do you want to shoot bucks?
Do you want to fill your freezer regardless of what sex it is?
You complain of high density and then complain about no shooting opportunities except at BB.
Like I said, I don't get what you are getting at.
Please explain what conditions you would like to see come about.

livbucks

I think the fact that most of the fawns were BB is because you have a low density of bucks in your area come the rut. Like I said before if you hold of on shooting antlerless, thus sparing your BB, your numbers will come up. Deer have a way of producing what sex the herd lacks. I think your situation is a regionally specific problem, to tell you the truth.

livbucks

"If you cut the tree, you get no fruit"

Words to hunt by...

DoubleLung55

I agree with livbucks...

If you want to see more buck in you area , dont shoot at yearlings period , this will allow u to have more doe , which will in turn become mature , and reproduce more buck , for some they say OH WELL U CANT TELL ITS A YEARLING! Yes u can , all you have to do is take 2 seconds and notice the small fat fuzzy face of the animal , and if there is a group of them , you can still tell by the facial features .... and if you cant , then you shouldnt take the hsot , that isnt positivley identifying your game... Im not harping , as you can do whatever you want on your hunting land , but on ours we jsut simply dont risk it , in the last 2 seaons we have taken only 2 BB 5 mature buck and 12 mature doe , the BB we took were both injured , one had a broken leg and the other a birth defect which was effecting eating habits..

It might not seem like it helps but letting all yearlings go does help. you will have doe to reproduce nd a constant flow of mature doe , as well as a constant flow of buck form the reproducing doe... on our property there r two deer that get shot , mature buck , and mature doe ... boh are plain as day when it comes to identification , and if you cant identify it by body or facial features , then you dont need to take the shot , you have plenty of time to go out and get another chance at a deer , jsut dont risk it on being greedy for meat in the freezer!