You mean 1 farmer who kills and lets lay 100 deer a year is a small number for a WMU??...Not to mention poaching, mistake kills, EHD, CWD, these are all happening in basically all areas...Then we can add the whole coyote predator problem in the mix as well where it applies...
 
They should over estimate for these factors in my opinion...
 
Grant it some areas around 2B are extremly over populated due to lack of area for deer and lack of access to hunt deer.  These areas i can see the high doe/deer harvest...i just dont understand it in the larger more open areas of the state where hunting access is easily gained...
 
 

Someone please define your interpretation of carrying capacity ? The state at one time held over 1.5million healthy deer ...... Is it deemed by the PGC , lumber folks , perhaps PETA , Easter Bunny or is it just a fictional number due to the fact that it cannot be determined due to the fluctuations by mother nature , your trigger finger , ect  ..

Carrying capacity is the max amount of deer that can live in an area year to year. The carrying capacity may not be desirable if you are a bird watcher or a timber man as anything a deer eats takes away from the other. Anyone who thinks the deer herd will be allowed to increase is only kidding themselves. The herd has been decreased from an estimated 30 dpsm to 12 dpsm in the state and national forest and with over half the state forest off limit to timbering and hunting not considered a recreational activity but merely a tool to be used when and if necessary you can forget 2B in the future. The National forest isn't much better as any attempt at timbering is met with lawsuits and many of the timber experts want the herd reduced below the 12dpsm. There has also been attempts to get legislation passed to start the process of changing the game lands to more recreational use to the detriment of hunting. All this will lead to more land posting and crowd out everyone who does not own or have access to their own land. Those of you who have your own land will say how good hunting is and tell those who don't to go where the deer are.  Then you will **** because they take your advice and are trespassing on your little honey hole. If you don't like what is happening your only recourse is to hammer on your elected officials to change it. It is the present administration and politicans that got the game commissioners to change the PGC's priorties and only they can get them to revise what they are doing. There are too many deer around the cities but not in the forests and there are many avenues for farmers and those hurt by pockets of deer to get relief.

The problem with your reply and the "NEW" PGC criteria is that ZERO deer is desirable for all the issues you described except deer health and deer health was not an issue. Up until they decided to reduce the herd all you ever read was the great hunting we had to offer. Why do you think all the Ohio plates showed up in town around deer season? Every old Game News was plastered with pictures of big bucks. Now any good buck photo says isn't AR/HR great. I think it's called rewriting history to be politically correct.

s-10, you are so right when you say deer health was never an issue. hopefully i am understanding this correctly.

Every camp I go into in the ANF has a wall full of spikes forkhorns and other small buck.  I have seen some nice, big bodied bucks shot in the past few years and I have taken a few as well

Of course the deer are heavier with wider antlers now. The 2-1/2 year olds and 1-1/2 year olds with good genetics are all we are allowed to shoot. I get tired of the PGC and DCNR trying to bulls-it us with that claim. That statement means nothing and proves nothing except maybe they have no real proof that HR/HR has done anything except ruin the deer hunting in many locations. A 2-1/2  year old buck weighed more than a 1-1/2 long before they started  HR/AR. As for zero dpsm, how do you know that isn't the goal of some folks or in some areas. When they had a set goal of so many dpsm in a given area we had a number to question if it was believed to be wrong or to watch to see what happened when it was met. Now they can manupliate it any way they see fit for what ever special interest group or politican they are trying to please at the moment. Since The enviromentalists started running the state forests and put more than half off limits to logging there will never be enough sunlight reach the floor to get any siginificant amount of regeneration if there are any deer around. If you look at the history of the group dictating how the state forests are run you will find most with a anti gun/hunting background. Start with Greenpeace and World Wildlife Fund.

They pick & choose THIER data according to whomever's @ss they wanna blow smoke up . I believe in what I see . ITS ALL VARIABLE. NO STUDY CAN IMPREGNATE DOES THAT DONT EXIST IN  AN FANTASY FOREST. They simply have been devastated.

Did you read the journal artical I posted, a couple hundred thousand is a pretty large sample size!  Also, deer weight and antler size is correlated to health and diet.  Therefore if you are seeing bigger deer, chances are they have better nutrition, more food, and in general better health.  Also, what do you suppose would happen with large deer densities and EHD.  Larger groups of deer = more infected deer, and it is able to spread easier.  With the weather patterns the way they are, don't expect EHD to dissapear.

S-10, I do agree with you on the logging issue.  Forest are not going to regenerate even with the decrease in the deer herd without logging.  Current practices in the ANF thin out the woods and give space and light to the cherry trees that are the straitest and most valuable in the woods.  This doesn't allow enough light to reach the forest floor for the dormant seeds to start growing.  I have seen logging operations on the gamelands and they are pretty sound logging practices, along with the border cuts the maintenence crews do to help create edge habitat.

DT,
 
A lot of guys complain not because there are no deer but because they lack the desire to find them.  They dwell on what used to be.  My father and I had a beautiful 10 pt. come between us the last morning of archery.  That same morning a 6, a 4, and 3 doe, crossed the road 10 yards from where a guy looked me in the face and told me that he gave up archery hunting here because there are no deer.  He was out for a ride.  What do you think about that situation DT ?.  And I told him about it.  I showed him the tracks in the snow.  "All yeah"  -- he says..  He could have grabbed his bow, walked up in there and hunted.  Instead, he decided to drive on, probably to complain to the next guy about no deer.
 
Why consistently complain about it ?  I mean, I guess we all vent at times but it's the same thing every year, same guys complaining about no deer.  Do folks NOT have the ability to go find a new area?  I don't know, you tell me..
 
why do you blame yourself for not seeing deer like you use too? 
 
This is where we differ.  I don't want to see deer like I used to.  I like it now.  I've witnessed mind-boggling differences in deer size and antler size.  It's not even comparable.  If an area gets run over with amish or gets slaughtered, I'm not going to sit there next year, see no deer, and complain about no deer.  That's ridiculous.  I'm going to find a new place.  My ability to find deer has nothing to do with the GC.  It's not like deer only reproduce every 5 years with one fawn.  I spent 120 hours in a treestand last year and saw 18 deer total.  This year, I saw more than that during the last week.  Because of more deer ?  I think it has more to do with the circumstances in each situation.  There's just too many variables (and opportunities) in hunting for me to place blame on someone else for my actions.

Silverkype--If you are seeing as many deer as you claim that merely means that the dpsm goal hasn't been met in the area you hunt. Enjoy it while you can. What happens when (IF) the numbers are met all over the state. In the meantime don't complain as you have in the past of people moving in on you. They are just following your advice and moving where the deer are.

SK, i to go other places when i see no deer in one place or the sign isn't there. (kinda goofy if we don't) but i see less and less sign of deer in a lot more places.
 i'll be one to complain, maybe it's because i seen the good old days when deer were plentiful and everything seemed good and constant with the 2-3 day doe hunt and the way the antler restrictions were.
 i could go on about how i felt when i got my first 5 pont when i was young. i think of my grandson now, like i believe someone said about what will keep him interested if he doesn't see or can't shoot the deer i take him out to find or others. 
i'm glad where you hunt is plentiful. i'm still trying to find that place again up here in the big woods. i'm not saying i don't see deer. just the quantity is way down and i feel the habitat is still there.
there deffenitly is variables. i'm sure if i had the time to go out more often i'de find a honey hole, but then maybe not.
hey, this gives us all something to gripe about and hear others opinions, as far as changing someones opinion on this thread will be rare but it may give a few something to think about.
there were big bucks when i was growing up just maybe fewer. now there are more big bucks to make head hunters happy (not trying to insult anyone) and therefore they'll be on the side of the pgc. i'm a meat hunter, so to say, and the fewer the deer the more disgruntle i get.  ~dt
 
  

2 things.
 
1.  I keep reading about bigger antlers and bigger spreads.  Who cares?  You can't even make soup out of the **** things.  They are just there to brag about.
 
2.  If the deer overbrowse so much that they keep forests from regenerating, how come say 20 years ago or so when they use to do clear cutting in the forests and there were thousands of deer the forests regenerated?  I would think that the high deer density would have kept the forests I look out my window at now could not have grown with all of the deer eating everything in site. 
 
This carrying capacity stuff is BS.  The forests (big woods) in Potter County Pennsylvania do not look any different now than they did when there was a deer for every tree.  Folks don't seem to understand that big woods deer have modified diets compared to farm deer or city deer.  It's called evolution. 
 
If you want to know about my reasearch I'll tell you.  For the last two deer seasons prior to 2007 I hunted 11 days in rifle season both years.  Saw 3 deer total, all yearling does about the size of a large dog.  Some of the areas that I hunted had acres of apple trees with rotten apples on the ground under them and others had enough acorns on the ground to make it feel like I was walking on ball bearings under the snow, which didn't have any deer tracks in it.  This was never the case prior to the extermination.  It was rare to see rotten apples because the deer ate them all.  You could never walk into the woods with snow down and not see deer, let alone tracks.  The food is still there, as it has been for generations, but the deer are either gone (dead), stopped eating apples and acorns or grew wings and now fly so they do not leave tracks in the snow. 
 
As far as less deer helping other animals.  Maybe in your area.  You could then and can still now walk in the woods and trip over a turkey and land on 10 squirrels.  You will still be hard pressed to find rabbits and grouse numbers are still really low, except for some pockets here and there and pheasants never really existed in the big woods and probably never will.
 
I wish I was the only one and just somehow lost any hunting skills I had, because I could re-learn them, as I use to be able to find and shoot deer rather easily, but most folks I run into tell the same stories, just different parts of the N. Central big woods.
 
For me the fact is there are not enough deer in the big woods and all I see is the PA Game Mismanagement Commission increasing hunter's abilities to kill even more deer with greater amounts of tags being available.
 
My solution.  This year was the first since the mid 80's that I didn't hunt in Pennsylvania and next year will be the second.  At this rate unless the PA Game Mismanagement Commission makes a lot of changes, 2009 will be the third and so on.  My solution is to not fund a hunting agency that is not interested in hunters anymore.  I hope that many others will step up and do the same thing and maybe we will make a difference.
 
New York isn't that far of a drive and they must have genetically altered their forests to regenerate even with deer eating them, because I still see plenty of deer there and they still have trees too.  From what I hear West by God Virginia has done the same and they still have deer too.

Evolution is the change in allele frequency over time, not switching a diet from corn to browse.  Also, depending on where you are at, most forest in Pa are second growth forest wich acctually regenerated back in the early 1900's when deer populations were decimated and they were reintroducing them from michigan.  The abundance of food did trigger a huge increase in deer numbers but since there was so much regeneration due to basically clearcutting PA, forest were still able to grow.  Perhaps you should go into apple farming since you have so many extra apples laying around!  Also, in respect to antler size, again studies and common sense tell you that antler size is related to nutrition and general health. 

 
Yea, I do remember that from my intro bio classes at Pitt.  I should have chosen more precise wording for my disertation above.  Sorry.
 
As far as the second growth stuff.  The woods I'm talking about I've been watching grow from a hideous clear cut back in the 80's.  They managed to grow from the ground up without being over eaten by the heathen deer herd we had.  In fact, they have grown so well, that parts of them are being cut down again.
 
Slate Drake, Double Ph.D in recognizing BS when I see and recognizing folks who have been duped by the PA Game Mismanagement Commission.
 
Have a good day.