Clear Creek and 2F

Hey Dr Trout - Need some clarification from you please. A little while ago I posted this:

"And people wonder why we don't see many deer up north (Clear Creek especially) anymore. Keep shooting all the does until they are all gone." Here's the thread... http://forums.fishusa.com/m_427993/mpage_1/key_/tm.htm

This was your response:

evidently Socom_16 - who has like 9 posts in three years - has decided to jump on the
"bash Doc" band wagon and brought OA along once again...

I would make one comment on his post where he mentions Clear Creek and that he does not
get there much... that's probably the exact reason he feels there are no deer there...
anyone that lives around here can and will tell you that is just BS..."

Here are some of your comments recently on Clear Creek and 2F:
http://forums.fishusa.com/ANF_%3D/m_442505/tm.htm

I have said it a thousand times hunting the ANF is the last place on earth that I would go to hunt Pa whitetails in today's world... I am sure the number of fair to good spots there is very few... even PGC foresters and WCOs that spend LOTS of time in that area agree it is not prime hunting grounds anymore.. NO habitat.. no food... no security for new born fawns...

talking about one poor area of 2F and trying to use that as a reason to lower allocations for the whole WMU is not fair to thousands who have no problems seeing and harvesting deer in other areas of that WMU....

If there are very few deer in the ANF. then simply DO NOT HUNT or HARVEST any deer there.. let the herd re-build.. but I doubt that is even possible for the next 5-10 years.... find another area with more deer.. there are plenty of them in 2F... that may allow the herd to re-build.. If guys still hunt there and harvesting what few deer are left I do not see how that is the fault of the PGC...

AND

"I have not hunted two spots at Clear Creek this year simply because I did not see deer there last year on several trips or on my scouting trips this summer......"

So, please tell me Dr Trout, are there deer in Clear Creek and 2F?

Clear Creek .... It took me exactly 45 minutes after daylight to have 8 deer under my tree climber the first day for killing antlerless... so if you are to believe others who claim there are less than 10dpms there .. I had ALL the deer within that square mile under me in 45 minutes... NOT... surely no one would believe that...


as for the post about not hunting two areas that I did not see deer last year... one had a gas well put in and I THINK it changed the feeding patterns in that area and I did not take the time to re-scout the area.. too many other good spots.. and I am not a fan of returning to areas once I hunt them and find no deer.... if I continued to hunt areas of clear creek, for example, that I see no deer I'd probably join the club saying there are no deer left there.. but I move.. find better areas and have been VERY successful over the years on both SGL#54 and especially clear creek. This year the mast crop was almost nil .... a hunter had to find butternuts, apples, and beechnuts, crop fields... that's what they were concentrating on this year..

so someone who hunted an acorn area last year and did not scout it out this year and showed up for the opening morning to hunt that same "favorite spot from the past" probably did not see deer...

I have always tried to say there are good and bad areas on every property... every look at one of the maps of collared deer and see where and how they travel ?? I always find it amazing that even in a small area there are places that that collared deer NEVER goes...

as for the rest of 2F.. same thing good spots and bad spots... RSB has even commented on those areas of 2F in his district and given advice on hunting there... and if memory serves me he even thinks there are good areas of the ANF ... but I have yet to see or hear of them from the locals around here.


As for the ANF .. I think you will find I have ALWAYS said the hunting there sucks and has for a long time, ever since the habitat started going down hill... I do not consider the ANF as any part of Clear Creek State Forest.. two separate areas and two separate habitats..

Clear Creek has good hunting in most of it ... I counted 45 cars in different areas there riding around yesterday in a 5-6 Mile circle..



Hint for hunting clear creek... walk around the fenced areas looking for trails to the fence... they will be coming from bedding areas or food areas... I sat near a fence a few years ago and watched/counted the same buck walk around it 4 times looking for a hot female trail

I have even helped on pellet counts at Clear Creek and there were areas we counted that we could not find any pellets... and others that showed 30-40 dpsm...

The key to successful hunting is pre-season scouting...


I am lucky and live where I hunt 24/7 .. after returning to full time work and having Sunday as a day off after 20+ years I can see how some have little time to do the necessary scouting or even more than just a day or two to hunt.....

that's where I suggest talking to the locals and getting their help... I have helped many over the years to find and hunt whitetails at clear creek and SGL#54 and I even have friends that work at and on the clear creek forest everyday and they are more than willing to give me suggestions and comments on what they see working there every day... I was told of an area this year that had "sevral great big bucks" .. I did not go there becuase I had NEVER searched or hunted that area.. but I will be checking it for next year.... again it involves a fenced area.

several years ago I told a guy where to sit in a thicket (that I was not about to go into) and that a 9 pointer was going in there almost every mornig at 8am... he went in there on opening day of rifle season and at 8:05am he put it down and it is on the wall at their camp and the story of my help is told EVER year when I stop for a visit...


I can only relay what I see and hear living here 24/7 ... but I do understand others that feel CCSF, 2F, and ANF are poor areas and have few deer ... I know better ... it's a matter of the good areas versus those areas that do not hold the deer for several reasons... ya gotta find the good areas...

and I see and saw yesterday cars parked at those poor areas... One vehicle was parked at a gas line running thru a thick laurel and rhododendron area that probably is close to a square mile all by itself..... I have walked that line a hundred times over 40 years and have NEVER even seen a track on it... my guess -- he was certain the deer used it as a bedding area and if he watched the line long enough he would see deer going and coming to the bedding area...

To each his own.. I just wanted people to know (IMHO) clear creek and many areas of 2F around here are still excellent deer hunting areas... including bucks for those willing to go where they live ... some 2F harvests photos are posted "over there"... just too many to transfer here...

Hi Doc- kinda the same as  in my 'expectations' thing.  When nature hands out a game changer for a season it gets different- gotta make the most of it.
 Dont mean Deer arent in the woods- just not where ya expected to find them.
  Hey did you PA guys have any kinda noticeable rut?  This was the slimmest I have ever seen in Ct. Even on Sunday hikes to surrounding properties where there is NO hunting- geeez one would think something woulda marched through making sign.
  We get to hunt with muzzel till Dec 31 so things may come around --hope---

Great buck and all congrats to the young man. As a side note of some regulations, check out the tag; not quite by the "book".Another stupid, not thought out reg..WF

we had aweful warm weather here except for the last 2.5 days... most days were in the mid to high 40s...

Actually that's very close to the norm for your area. Nov historical avg high is 48 and dec Avg high is 37.

Yep, the norm for Pa is anything but normal. Last year I was hunting in **** deep snow much of the season and this year there was only 2 days you could even follow a track.

You have pm doc.

No pm showing up wayne ????

Try it now doc.

Blaming the PGC for the lack of deer is exactly the same as blaming murder rates on the gun manufacturers. There is NO difference. Spin it however you like but hunters kill deer, not the PGC.

True the tags have to be issued to try to control the harvest..

but that is all the PGC can do.. issue tags.. they do not tell the hunters where to hunt in a WMU... nor can they control who gets tags and where they decide to hunt in a WMU...

so if an area is deemed by some to have few deer, go somewhere to hunt and fill your tag...

but as we see here guys complain about low numbers but continue to hunt and kill deer in the area they are complaining about...

Others use their tags year after year in areas that have enough deer that they feel comfortable in harvesting one there and do not complain...

The problem as I see it is.. for every one hunter complaining about low deer numbers some one else in that same area has no problem finding deer and thus harvests his there.... perfect example is the clear creek thread.. I have no problem harvesting and seeing deer there all the time.. others do not see them and thus feel they are not there and we should not hunt there to allow the herd to build...

harvesting a deer is still the decision a hunter has to make before he pulls the trigger or flings an arrow ..

Blaming the PGC for the lack of deer is exactly the same as blaming murder rates on the gun manufacturers. There is NO difference. Spin it however you like but hunters kill deer, not the PGC.

That may be the dumbest thing Ive ever heard. More accuarate comparison would be blaming the murder rate on the legislators if they were to make it legal.

Pgc is permitting and encouraging the degradation to take place. Not addressing it by regulation as is their job to do. They are every bit as responsible for widescale overharvest as they are for underharvest.

If they dont want that responsibility, Id very happily pay someone else to come in and manage our deer herd that will.

There have always been areas of both over harvest and under harvest in every management unit, even from the time it was done by county management units, and there always will be no matter how large or small the units might be.

While that statement is basicly true it is also true that the larger the area the more likely it is to happen and more pronunced the discrepency will be and that has been proven with the current WMU's. 2G is a prime example of that in the North and 2B in the South. It is a given fact that the smaller the unit you are working with the smaller the deviation will be within that unit regardless if you are talking deer or widgets.

ORIGINAL: Dr. Trout

Usually we do not have warm weather for the whole two weeks of rifle season.. last year we had rain the first two days, then snow on the ground for the rest of it... it varies from year to year, this year was just one of those warm ones........


one year I hunter the first three days in just a sweatshirt... and then another year it was ZERO for the first three days !!!

 
Can you explain why having two "warm" days out of a possible 12 firearms hunting days (17%) has such a detrimental affect on the PA harvest (kill, whatever) results, yet having four out of seven firearms hunting days (57%) in Ohio of all day deluge rains that caused widespread flooding translates into "hunting isn't good in Ohio" based on the harvest (kill, whatever) results?

Just where does this guy come up with this stuff ... he throws percentages and compares apples to oranges alot but I guess his reading is not as good as his other knowledge ...

I can't get over how he just "makes stuff up" to challenge me ...

here is EXACTLY what I posted....

we had aweful warm weather here except for the last 2.5 days... most days were in the mid to high 40s...

and here is what he made up that I posted ...

Can you explain why having two "warm" days out of a possible 12 firearms hunting days (17%) has such a detrimental affect on the PA harvest (kill, whatever) results

UNBELIEVABLE !!!!

As for the second post.. RSB already explained that.. the PGC has the info down to townships etc.. but they can only use that to help determine how many tags to issue for the entire WMU.. as mentioned.. they can not control where a hunter goes any given year within a WMU..

I hunt here in Polk township ( hunting at home), spring creek if at one clear creek spot, snyder or warsaw township if hunting SGL#54, millstone, heath, spring creek all spots in Clear creek but different townships....

so the PGC has no idea where I might fill my tag until I send it in, and many years it is different from the past year township of harvest.... but all in 2F ...

Time for me to ignore this guy completely ...