Can't have gotten too much smarter. Per the PGC we still kill the same percentage of legal bucks as we did before AR/HR. More doe may have started to go nocturnal than before due to our shooting them earlier than ever but the big bucks are doing what they have always done.

Can't have gotten too much smarter. Per the PGC we still kill the same percentage of legal bucks as we did before AR/HR.

But keep in mind the number of 1.5 year old in the total has not changed a whole lot either....

that 20% that do not get killed is where I think the smarter is showing up, I'll bet most of the ones surviving are the older ones 3, 4, 5, etc ... in years past I think many 1.5 were just lucky and made it thru, now I think it's the older ones more than 1.5 year olds..

?????

But keep in mind the number of 1.5 year old in the total has not changed a whole lot either....

The number of 1.5 buck in the harvest has dropped dramatically. In 2000 we harvested 166K 1.5 buck and in 2009 we only harvested 53K 1.5 buck. The percentage of 1.5 buck dropped from 82% in 2000 to 49% in 2009.

that 20% that do not get killed is where I think the smarter is showing up, I'll bet most of the ones surviving are the older ones 3, 4, 5, etc ... in years past I think many 1.5 were just lucky and made it thru, now I think it's the older ones more than 1.5 year olds..

Around 17 or 18% of the 2.5+ buck survive because they aren't AR legal so only around 3% of the 2.5+ buck that survive, do so by being smarter or lucky, That fact is confirmed by the small increase in bucks 3.5 and older in the harvest.

If we are in fact still harvesting 80% of the AR legal bucks statewide as the PGC has claimed then the lower harvest rate in 2G is more likely because the hunters are staying away from 2G. The reason for the 1-1/2 year old buck kill dropping dramatically from 2000 to 2009 is simply that the herd has been reduced by that much. Any drop in harvest rate due to antler restrictions would only have happened the first year of AR had it not been coupled with herd reduction.

I have three 2-1/2 year old bucks behind my house that I see and have on camera. One is a high racked 5 point, one is a 15" 4x2, and one is a 16" long tined 6 point and I am in the 4 point area. In the last five years at least 30% of the older bucks I see are not legal.

Your wrong RSB. If antler restrictions started in 2002 and as a result 113K bucks were harvested that year then the 113K is the baseline to compare the succeding years of AR to. The difference between the 113K and 53K has little or nothing to do with AR and nearly everything to do with Herd Reduction. Alts claim of More AND Better bucks ignored the fact the real plan was Herd REDUCTION and the difference between 113K and 53K reflects the results of that plan.

I am not sure I understand this discussion....

Did guys really believe we were going to decrease the deer herd by about 50% and not decrease the total harvest numbers for bucks and antlerless after the first few years of HR...

Here in Jefferson County during the first two years of HR/AR we harvested THREE YEARS worth of antlerless deer alone.... and extra whole year's harvest.. that can and will not be made up overnight.... especially since efforts are currently to maintain the herd at its current level til habitat improves to support more deer...

as a result surely you can see why the buck and doe harvest figures have fallen ..... ???

so if the harvest was... 113K and you start to protect 1/2 the bucks and now only have half the bucks as a whole it would seem normal TO ME that the harvest would fall to 53K .

If we went from 20-30dpsm to 10-15dpsm how could anyone think the harvest of bucks and does would not decrease by 50% or more percent ???

If it was a GREAT ratio and we had 10-15 bucks psm and now have only 5-7 bucks psm

and 2-3 of them are NON-AR legal how could the total not decline...


even if every one of them was legal the harvest would not have recovered to the "good old days" this quickly....


It appears the harvests are pretty stable the past few years everything is working as planned..
returning to a more normal harvest figure...IMHO...

How can it return to 110K if there are not that many bucks entering the population with fewer does to bear them and many being protected ???

2009 may be the lowest but so is the year that the most were killed not a normal harvest figure...

normal harvest to me would be what the average harvest is for a period of time and that would be based on good stable habitat and what that habitat should support...

too many of us got spoiled into huge harvest figures when the herd was not a normal herd... and felt that should be the normal harvest for Pa deer hunting...it was too big... with our current mature forests and lack of good re-generation I would say the current figures would be the norm for this period in our deer hunting history..

this year could be a banner year for buck harvests and then those of us trusting the DMP can boast how well it is working and you guys will still complain....

Also, remember the record buck harvests in 2000 and 2001 were due to below normal doe harvests in 1998 and 1999 due to foul weather all 3 days of the season.

Interesting you use weather to support your claim here, but do not want to allow for bad weather last year on day 1 and the following Saturday.. to explain the lower bucks harvest last year

plus I look for the buck harvest this year to rebound to about 125,000....simply because of the lower harvest last year.. weather permitting...

ORIGINAL: deerfly

I didn’t misrepresent any of the facts, I just correct the ones you misrepresent.
[/quote

If you didn't misrepresent the facts and didn't intentionally mislead the hunters,please explain why the total buck harvest decreased from 203K in 2001 to 108K in 2009. Were ARs responsible for this huge decrease? Did ARs protect more 1.5 buck each year and those bucks just disappeared and didn't show up in the harvest as 2.5+ buck? Why has the 2.5+ buck harvest decreased from 62K in 2003 to 108K in 2009 if ARs are saving more 1.5 buck each year? Why didn't the buck harvest return to normal in 2003 as you and Alt predicted it would?

The simple fact is you hitched your wagon to the PGC plan and now that the facts prove beyond a doubt that you were wrong, you just can't stand to admit it, so you continue to try to defend the indefensible and the only way you can do that is by misrepresenting the facts.

 
I see you still cherry pick since high data years to compare to single year low data years to misrepresent the real facts. So, I will once again present more of the facts for those that truly do want to understand reality instead of just getting sucked deeper into your misguided agenda.
 
First of all the buck harvests of the late 1990s and early this century were not normal buck harvests because we had been experiencing about five years of abnormally high fawn recruitment from a series of good mast crops being combined with years of extremely mild winters. Those abnormally ideal fawn recruitment conditions continued until the winter of 2002/2003 at which point fawn recruitment returned to more normal levels.  The abnormal increase in fawn recruitment during those years between about 1996 and 2002 allowed the entire deer population to explode to levels that couldn’t be sustained for the long term but it also created a series of years when the number of 1 ½ year old bucks available for harvest was considerably higher than it should have been, was normal or could long term be sustained.
 
Those abnormal fawn recruitment years can be seen and tracked by simply comparing the number of 1 ½ year old bucks being harvested during those years compared to the years before that when we were having normal winters and fawn recruitment. To show that point I am going to provide the number of 1 ½ year old bucks harvested for a longer period of time. I am also going to express those harvests in the number harvested per square mile of land mass just because it puts the numbers into a more commonly comparable number.
 
Prior to 2002 nearly all bucks 1 ½ and older were legal bucks but since antler restrictions there are also now other factors besides just fawn recruitment that can and will affect the number of 1 ½ year old bucks that will be available for legal harvest. The previous years mast and winter conditions now have a great affect on the percentage of the 1 ½ year old bucks that will be antler legal in any given year so I am also going to post the percentage of the bucks that were antler legal during the volunteer survey routes since 2002 when antler restrictions were put in place to protect some of the smaller 1 ½ year old bucks. When looking at he percent of antler legal bucks since 2002 it must also be realized that those results also include more 2 ½ and older bucks so if you were to remove them from the equation then it would be pretty clear that there is a great difference in the number of 1 ½ year old bucks that meet legal antler restrictions from year to year, based on the environmental conditions they experiences as a button buck.  
 
Year……….# 1 ½ year old bucks harvested………% bucks antler legal
91…………………..2.74………………………………….nearly all
92…………………..2.97………………………………….”           â€œ
93…………………..2.92………………………………….”           “
94…………………..2.89………………………………….”           “
95…………………..3.36………………………………….”           “
96…………………..2.87………………………………….”           “
 
97…………………..3.21………………………………….”           “
98…………………..3.27………………………………….”           â€œ
99…………………..3.47………………………………….”           “
00…………………..3.70………………………………….”           “
01…………………..3.56………………………………….”           “
02…………………..2.52…………………………………….52%
03…………………..1.79…………………………………….43%
04…………………..1.38…………………………………….41%
05…………………..1.40…………………………………….49%
06…………………..1.69…………………………………….64%
07…………………..1.36…………………………………….39%
08…………………..1.42…………………………………….63%
09…………………..1.18…………………………………….43%
 
When you look at the facts of the harvest history it is pretty clear that the glory years of buck harvests in the late 90s and early 2000’s were not normal harvest years and instead were the result of abnormal fawn recruitment from having low doe harvests combined with extremely good environmental conditions. Ideal mast and winters can’t last forever though and when the environmental conditions returned to normal everyone should be able to recognize and accept the fact that fawn recruitment returned to more normal levels as well.
 
Considering the fact that with antler restrictions we now protect about 50% or more of our 1 ½  year old bucks, depending largely on the previous year’s winter conditions, it is also pretty easy to see that if we were to double the 1 ½ year old buck harvests to replicate what was happening before antler restrictions our buck harvests since antler restrictions are pretty much normal and what should be expected.
 
R.S. Bodenhorn    

You really do have a lot of data and are willing to share it which is great but the claims you try to make from that data are questionable at best. To start the PGC changed the info from actual count to estimated in 1986 so anything prior to that is not valid. Then you grabbed a definition of normal harvest out of the sky to support the claim you were trying to make. If the good buck harvests were a result of low doe harvest why did the all time highest buck harvest come the year AFTER the all time high doe harvest prior to HR/AR? While the time frame in question had some good weather and mast it also had some poor weather and mast, at least it did according to the PGC claims when the harvest figures were released for those years. Try reading some game news magazines from the period. As for enviromental conditions having now returned to normal I would like to introduce you to Al Gore and Global Warming.

Prior to 2002 nearly all bucks 1 ½ and older were legal bucks but since antler restrictions there are also now other factors besides just fawn recruitment that can and will affect the number of 1 ½ year old bucks that will be available for legal harvest. The previous years mast and winter conditions now have a great affect on the percentage of the 1 ½ year old bucks that will be antler legal in any given year so I am also going to post the percentage of the bucks that were antler legal during the volunteer survey routes since 2002 when antler restrictions were put in place to protect some of the smaller 1 ½ year old bucks. When looking at he percent of antler legal bucks since 2002 it must also be realized that those results also include more 2 ½ and older bucks so if you were to remove them from the equation then it would be pretty clear that there is a great difference in the number of 1 ½ year old bucks that meet legal antler restrictions from year to year, based on the environmental conditions they experiences as a button buck.

All of the factors you cite would account for the year to year fluctuations in the percentage of bucks saved and the per cent of each age class in the harvest . But, they do not come close to explaining why we harvested 113K 1.5 buck buck in 2002 and only 53K 2009. The only explanation for such a huge decrease is that the herd produced 60 K fewer 1.5 buck in 2009 than in 2002.

No one knows what a normal buck harvest should be for the state because the size of the herd is controlled by the interests of particular groups of stakeholders instead of by the carrying capacity of the habitat. If the herd would be allowed to increase to the MSY carrying capacity of the habitat our normal buck harvest would be over 300K/yr.

RSB -In the Draft deer plan it states that ---The largest harvest of deer occurs at deer population levels of Approx 50-60% of Max carrying capacity. That would mean that in 1999, 2000 and 2001 we were not at the excessive deer numbers you claim.

WTF are you talking about?

The 5 highests doe kills were all since HR and the buck population statewide has plummented since then. The winters may have hurt the deer in your small area but were not the cause statewide. I love it when you try to make claims which counterdict those of your own biologists and researchers. Again-- the DRAFT DEER PLAN STATES--The largest harvest of deer occurs at deer population levels of approx 50-60% of max carrying capacity. Go argue with your own experts, it's their research not mine.

I,ve been just kicking back and not saying much but now have to chime in.
In 2G the first year they opened doe with buck it was a slaughter. Every camp had deer hanging and the shooting never stopped. I knew then that things were going to be changed for a long time. And it has, with very few deer in my neck of the woods. You say it is because of lack of hunters and the deer are not being pushed. lmao. Bear hunting has taken over the void
of the deer hunting. The sighting of deer during bear season is very minimal.
As an example, there are usually 12-15 of us at my camp and we push many
areas and see crap for deer. I know many locals and its been the same report. I find that what you are saying about the carrying capacity is bogus.
The logging in my area is huge. Much regrowth and plenty of browsing to be had but no deer to enjoy it. Meanwhile the bear have plenty of places to hold up in. AR has done little, in my neck of the woods ,to give us more or sustainable deer herds(6) and bigger racked bucks. If you even see a buck.
Our camp now has jokingly been renamed, bear camp. Mostly beer camp.:(