chickory

Lots of people are curious. Its easy to be when it happens in another state. No risk for you. As one NY hunter said here on the forum this week " hey you pa guys ought to see upstate NY's low deer #'s". Well, isn't that the whole point of Pa hunters speaking out and writing thier commissioners?
and legislators?..... BECAUSE WE DON'T WANT TO BE LIKE UPSTATE NY with a 18% success rate.

But we have 6 years under this deer team, and they admitted they were "ineffective". For all thier promises of more and bigger bucks, we got a reduced buck harvest from 203,000 prior to ARHR, to 165k the next year, dooooooown to 142k the next and we don't really know exactly how dismal this year was as the final results don't come in till March. but one of our commissioners (whom I believe is privy to some preliminary insights) says;

"We're killing the same big bucks we've killed for 10 years," (Mohr) said. "The only difference is, when you see them laying on the butcher shop floor, there aren't a bunch of spikes around them."

Mohr said he believes the buck kill this year will be around 100,000. That means about one in 10 hunters bagged a buck, he said.
"If you look at that average, some hunters will get a buck once every 10 years," he said. "And then you have guys who get bucks every year, which means somewhere there's a hunter who's only getting a buck once every 20 or 30 years.

"There are Pennsylvania hunters who now will never kill a buck in their lifetime and that bothers me."


Thats what you get after 6 years of Alt.


Heres some more.

"Ray Martin, a director with the Pennsylvania Federation of Sportsmen's Clubs, the state's largest sportsmen's group, believes the time is right for Alt to leave. While Alt tried to do what he thought was right, deer numbers have dropped so low that they're "almost an embarrassment, almost a disgrace."


"Charles Bolgiano, of Lancaster County, is a director of the Unified Sportsmen of Pennsylvania, Alt's most severe critic. He cheered word of Alt's retirement, saying his deer management strategies were built on the politics of satisfying foresters and others at the expense of good science.
"All of that talk of overabundance of deer was just a smokescreen," Bolgiano said. "DCNR (the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources) was calling the shots."

Comments in Lancaster paper from Game Commissioner Steven Mohr. One of seven commissioners today:
"Stephen L. Mohr of Bainbridge, who is one of seven members of the Board of Game Commissioners, said Alt never delivered on his promise of more big bucks.
"We're killing the same big bucks we've killed for 10 years," Mohr said. "The only difference is, when you see them laying on the butcher shop floor, there aren't a bunch of spikes around them."

Mohr said he believes the buck kill this year will be around 100,000. That means about one in 10 hunters bagged a buck, he said.
"If you look at that average, some hunters will get a buck once every 10 years," he said. "And then you have guys who get bucks every year, which means somewhere there's a hunter who's only getting a buck once every 20 or 30 years.

"There are Pennsylvania hunters who now will never kill a buck in their lifetime and that bothers me."

I bought into Alt's program in the beginning. It seemed to make sense to a non-scientist like me.

But I guess I started to lose faith in it about a year ago when I heard Alt continue to preach for the fourth year in a row that we need to kill more deer.
Again, I'm not a scientist, but it just became harder for me to accept the fact that the one and only way to save our forests is to kill the deer, kill the deer, kill the deer.
And even if that is the only scientific way to save them, then I guess I'm not in favor of putting the health of our forests above deer hunting.
I have no doubts that there are places where there are too many deer that are causing a lot of damage. The problem is, those deer live in areas that don't get hunted, and Alt's program only focused on killing deer where they are hunted.
So our State Game Lands, state forests, state parks and other public lands, as well as private property where hunting is allowed, have been getting pounded season after season by hunters with an ever-increasing number of doe tags in their pockets, while the islands of privately-owned land where hunting is forbidden remain untouched.
Call me thick-headed, call me a dumb redneck, but that's a plan I just couldn't support any longer. It stopped making sense."



Maybe you don't want to take my word so the above quotes from the LARGEST sportsmens group in pa who SUPPORTED Alt is very telling, as well as the the comments from a sitting commissioner and Charles Bolgiano who the PGC has bestowed the states highest wildlife conservation honors. Cal Dubrock (ex-Gary's boss) said Bolgiano has done more for hunters in Pa than any other man in the last 40 years.
He was on the Governors Advisory panel under Ridge.

When they all speak together, you ought to be listening......