I won’t bother with the numbers because there is enough negativity in this post. It was a frustrating gun season for me, for the 1st time in 40+ seasons I lost/wounded a buck with a rifle. I also missed a big doe and passed on a couple of small one. Time to get out the smoke pole.
Mike

We toughed it out in the steady rain Saturday. I was able to push a nice wide buck past one of my buddies twice but he could never get a good shot at it. I saw two legal bucks Saturday and a half dozen does. 

It's a simple formula .....rifle hunting bucks in Pa.
 
I guess if you hunt with 10 guys and all are pushing deer your success rate is high . If you hunt private posted land and have nice permanent stands up and friends pushing deer around ,your success rate is high. If you hunt public land or national forest or with less than 3 people your success rate is very low.
 
I know these percentages posted are saying things are the same as pre AR's but one only has to look around with eyes open and see they are not. Like I said ...we use to drive by camps and see bucks actually hanging from camp poles ....some camps had 2-3 bucks hanging , some had 1, some had none , but one thing for sure in those days there were bucks hanging and you didn't go too far without seeing a buck hanging near a camp.....try that now ! ....lol 
 
Like I said out of 20 avid rifle hunters in my area not one scored a buck ....again !   
 
To me seeing is believing ....not percentage numbers juggled .

In closing, may I present some FFT (a/k/a; something to think about)

The PGC does "not" fabricate statistics regarding the kil...... ehhhh, harvest of the elusive PA White Tailed Deer.

The PGC "is" however, guilty of wasting the money of the (fast becoming) elusive PA hunter(s).

Wasting money, hiring bogus "outside study groups" that do/have/will fabricate statistics regarding the (definite) "killing" of the elusive, PA White Tailed Deer Herds.

Further more, why would any "outside study group", making their living generating statistics regarding the "wishes of the PGC" say anything other than, what the PGC wants thier bread & butter to hear?

With that, the reports of the "real" life hunting experience I'm reading this season..... thanks for the (not so good) memories. I am BTDT!🤗

CAPTAIN HOOK 
Like I said out of 20 avid rifle hunters in my area not one scored a buck ....again !   

 
If no bucks are being killed, why haven't the buck numbers improved in your area? 

dpms

CAPTAIN HOOK 
Like I said out of 20 avid rifle hunters in my area not one scored a buck ....again !   

 
If no bucks are being killed, why haven't the buck numbers improved in your area? 

 Wish I knew .....many are not legal and for some unknown reason not improving ...sometimes a 6 point stays a 6 point forever....seems by the last few reports here archery hunters are harvesting bucks way better than rifle hunters....just like I stated our buck pool at work was...archery hunters far out produced rifle kills the past 5 years I was there.
 

dpms
 
 That gets back to my previous point. Hunting remains good for hunters that are hunting where the deer are and not so good for hunters that hunt where there are fewer deer. Same now as then. Overall, success rates are not much different.
 
And to the surprise of some that think archery hunters are killing all of the deer, success rates for archery hunters on antlered deer are close to success rates of rifle hunters. 
 
 

Hard to hunt deer where they are if posted signs line both sides of a road for miles....once again hunting in Pa. is  becoming more privatized hunting in many areas , just like many other states. Sure we have more game lands and that's good, but the reality is they are not everyone's choice due to crowded conditions or far travel or harder conditions to hunt in. Remember you must park in parking lots on GL's even though you hunt farther away ....not easy dragging deer. 
 
I know locally we have deer ...city deer , suburb deer that in no way can rifle hunters pursue...archery yes... and they do get them. That's why I personally find the numbers PGC posts can't be true . Most archery hunters I know do fairly well every year on bucks, can't say the same on rifle hunters .       

So I'm not a real hunter because I am smart enough to drag my kill out with an ATV?? Bunch of whiners..You want private land to hunt ?? Pony up and buy your own ...Pay the property taxes on it each year...
Boo Hooo, life changes every day, you can't live in the past as many on here are whining about...I suppose you probably blame the lack of snow on the PGC also...They are there to protect and manage the critters of this state and they do a pretty good job..No I don't agree with all of their positions but sure do back them...Their job isn't to cow toe to every whim and try to keep the hunters all happy..  Hey look at that I can see three doe out in the Posted Private Property across the road.. Greedy bastard..Oops that's my field..Sorry..Not

Bing, great post.

Dardys, picking from a previous post, I want to be sure I understand. After 14 years of AR you had 20+ shooter bucks on camera. In the last 5 years that has tanked to nearly zero. Local information you have tells you deer harvest is lower the past 5 years compared to previous years. The reasons are unknown for this reduction, but with fewer deer being shot it’s reasonable to think deer numbers would go up?

What do you think is the cause

Hook, whats your hang up with land owners who choose to post their land? 

Funny you mention genetics....with the 3-up rule, PGC is protecting more and more scrub bucks from being harvested, we have seen more and more 6-pts that aren't legal in 2D.

psu_fish
Funny you mention genetics....with the 3-up rule, PGC is protecting more and more scrub bucks from being harvested, we have seen more and more 6-pts that aren't legal in 2D.

Sounds like AR/HR is working as intended in your area.  Probably better habitat now and lots of those sixer's are probably well fed, nice 1.5 year olds. 

double posts for some odd reason......

anzomcik
Bing, great post.

Dardys, picking from a previous post, I want to be sure I understand. After 14 years of AR you had 20+ shooter bucks on camera. In the last 5 years that has tanked to nearly zero. Local information you have tells you deer harvest is lower the past 5 years compared to previous years. The reasons are unknown for this reduction, but with fewer deer being shot it’s reasonable to think deer numbers would go up?

What do you think is the cause

Honestly, I don’t know. But I could venture some educated guesses — none of which is the sole root cause, but part of a combination that is probably responsible.

HR didn’t start with AR. HR started, not as an intentional herd management tool, but as a revenue stream.

Way back when, it was one and done. If you killed a buck, the doe license, which used the same tag, was void. Bucks were shot on a frequency that a lot of guys I knew didn’t bother to spend the money on a doe license.

The herd was large, way overpopulated with does, so the PGC changed to being able to kill a buck and a doe, with the idea that they would sell more doe, now tags. This did a couple of things. It kept guys hunting, namely those that knew what they were doing, instead of them being done after tagging a buck. It also permitted the casual hunters more opportunity because there simply were more hunters in the woods. We hunted southern to central Clearfield County at the time, an area which was fairly populated with deer camps. Those camps, when it was one and done, were a buzz from Thanksgiving to the first Wednesday. There were some folks around the first and last Saturday, but it was mostly beer drinking and card playing. It was normal to literally see 50-70 deer.

When it changed to a buck and a doe, the camps were populated more days and with guys determined to get two deer. Keep in mind, while this wasn’t subsistence hunting, two deer went a long way toward the winter meat bill. At this point, we started to normally see 20-30 deer.

Then, someone at the PGC figured out that they could put more doe tags in the system and sell the extra ones as “bonus” tags and have an even greater impact on their revenue stream. With so many tags available, those camps started to community hunt and guys that hadn’t shot a deer in decades, maybe never even ventured out with gun in hand, took home a tagged deer. Our sightings dropped to 15 or less per day.

Then AR/HR kicked in with concurrent seasons, it was brown and down with bunches of tags, and sightings dropped to less than 10 per day. We quit hunting there because of that. The herd size was reduced to a very small number in comparison to what it once was and it was no longer worth the long drive over bad roads and the 2+ hour drag to get a deer out, so we started hunting much closer to home and were seeing the same 10 or less deer.

At this point, we sought out private ground to hunt and secured enough spots that still had ample populations. In fact, I deer hunted a pheasant preserve where I guided for birds for 6-8 years. The guy that owned it and his buddies were big time archery trophy hunters, so my mission was simple —reduce the doe population, which I did not mind doing. It was nothing to see 25-30 in an evening, much like the old days. But all good things come to an end, as did this.

But we bought this new ground and there were deer on it, not lots, but more than average, and some bucks the likes I had never seen. And life and sightings were good, both physically and on camera. Over the next 5 years, as you noted, things have gotten progressively worse.

So here are the theories.

Society has changed. We have much more to do and hunting, if it is not going well gets pushed aside for other things. The loss of hunters is mainly the loss of casual hunters. And these folks were essential in the good hunters getting deer. They entered the woods late, moving deer. They smelled, moving deer. They got cold and left early for lunch, moving deer. They got bored and did drives, moving deer. They heard home early, moving deer.

Who is left out there are the dedicated hunters who don’t move, have good clothes that they don’t get cold in, blinds which cut the wind, etc.

More and more are hunting private land, with less hunters on it. And deer are not moved. This leads deer to act, well, like deer. They sleep in the day unless there is an unusual weather or people event and feed and move at night. My cameras bear this out. Last year I didn’t have a daylight photo of a buck from August on.

Those that are seeing deer in the daylight are catching them between feeding and bedding, but with small parcels, in my area, that’s not always possible, in fact, it’s improbable. Some of the guys I know are hunting 800 to 1,500 acres with 4-6 guys in total, all of whom may not be there at the same time, especially in archery due to the long season.

Add in that some deer enter this private conglomerate of land from a huge mountain SGL and another societal factor kicks in — with so few sightings, guys are taking the first legal deer they see and those are more than likely does because this is a CWD area, which makes them legal in any season. The results are a lower population, perhaps to that 10 deer per square mile level, and another hunter not in the woods again to move deer, even inadvertently. Heck, I tried to piggyback in a hunt with an outdoor writer friend of mine the first Saturday and he told me point blank, “I got a deer in the freezer (he killed a 5-point opening day, it was the only deer he saw except for a 4-point dragging the other one out), I still hunted two days for doe in the fresh snow without seeing a tail, so I’m going to lay on the couch and bet on college football.” If one would think of a person to hunt everyday of the season, it should have been him.

So, what I have here is herds under 10 deer per square mile; no casual hunters to move deer; good hunters taking the first available deer and calling it a season; extremely lightly hunted private ground; and who knows what else.

I do think that it is the HR to the 10 deer per square mile factor mostly though. With a balanced buck to doe ratio of probably 1-3, that means only 6-7 does get breed. Some get killed in hunting season, some die on the roads, some die of old age, some no longer are breedable (we had three old does around this summer that had no fawns); some fawns are lost to predators, including eagles, and the population never gains any ground.

The bucks that used to travel to find does, don’t. They breed the very localized ones, not wasting the energy to travel far and wide in search of.

But it is all conjecture.

What is fact is they were here, now they are not. And those that remain are nocturnal.

dpms
A few questions......
  You know how people get access to posted ground? They ask permission and never stop trying to secure hunting spots. 
 
 

 
Yea ...that's about worthless and impossible today as it was years ago on most posted areas....and they are understandable .
 
I knocked on many doors years ago ..some read me the riot act about slob hunters...parking and littering, tree stands  , others hunt their own property , one guy showed me bullet holes in his shed , one guy said spot lighting his house and fields pizzes him off...but after we talked awhile he did say go ahead , others don't believe in killing animals period, some had no idea who owned the property posted ...........also you ever go down a long dirt driveway to a shack house way back in the woods with signs saying no trespassing , or trespassers will be shot on sight  ? ...me neither . 
 
Good luck with that one ! 

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