I am originally from PA and still own a fairly nice chunk of property there... Hunters are down...when I was young there it was the Orange army, now we only hear a few shots... Being a retired military guy, I had the opportunity to hunt in states all over and didn't understand how out of balance PA was till I traveled...I really thought I knew how to hunt but I didn't....once I learned that quantity wasn't quality I started to enjoy those other states...as a kid we drove the woods and truthfully that ain't hunting....its shooting....what we see now in PA is a transformation like Obama... We see those who want a big buck n those who want to see deer...size doesn't matter...as we see that older generation disappear we see a new progression in hunting....not sure what was better...now on the outdoor shows I see the host saying any deer is a good deer...hummmm... Did they see it dropping the numbers across the nation..?? Probably...our farm is a great example of the future...hunting pressure has declined dramatically...our farm is hunted for QDM to the best of our ability... None of the other farms are... Enter some new constraints...coyotes n now bear...in westmoreland county we now regularly see bear...coyotes as well....fawn recuitment is down.. Normally we see all does with 2 or 3 fawns..lately 1 with the occasional 2...our farm carries about 12 deer all year round with another 20+ as transients ... I've carefully set up areas all over the farm for bedding and feeding...in the past we regularly shot 10+ does n 2-3 bucks exceeding 8 pts....problem 1 is the QDM rules say 3 pts to a side....that's great for young bucks but we have 4 n 5 yr old bucks who ARE 3x3 n need shot...so now we have those genetics in the herd...
Enter kids, now we have to bend the rules and invite kids to shoot our old cull bucks but they are not stupid..a 5yr old 6 pt is a smart buck...so it's hard to keep a kid still enough or quiet enough to kill one...especially when the dad isn't real good at hunting either...he can't sit still or quit smoking or texting or dicking around too....
These days we are only shooting 3-5 does annually...add another problem, no one hunts coyotes or bear in our area....I hunt them every time I'm there but I travel for work n live in another state...so my data indicates from the12 trail cams on constantly....we have yotes all over...usually we get a couple pics daily....problem...not to mention the doe tags being high which is a good thing...my problem is when we as hunters don't do the right thing...science is science...carrying capacity is carrying capacity.... Predation is predation.... Some seasons I pass all the bucks to hope the genes are spread...I know I'm not going to kill a buck that passes the ones I got in Georgia or Ohio or Kansas but it may be the biggest I've ever gotten there...I hear guys complaining about kids getting bored and giving up on a big buck...how about getting the kid prepared for the brains in an older buck....if the dads expectation is that a monster is going to commit suicide in 20 mins then the hunt isn't souring the kid the dad is...
2 years ago I could hunt nor could my neighbor so I got a dad n his kid off the PA website to shoot 3 does and a cull buck, think out of the box ...
My neighbors farm is great but he's old school n thinks does never need shooting and supplement food is stupid...yet he has cattle.....hummmm again....
What has always bothered me is I know PA could rival IL, KY, OH if we had a dedicated group of forward thinkers and we changed the game commission from being a political group of wusses.....my farm same size in IL would bring 5500-6000 an acre...due to trophy hunting...here it's 2000-2500 per acre....same bad democratic tax structure but I could at least think of it as a potential win if I sold it to a hunter....nice thing is our farm lies in between 3 others that comprise 1200 acres of contiguous ground....dad picked a great chunk of dirt way back when...
PA has the genetics and the potential just not the politics or the forward thinking....hopefully someday we will see it by the time I retire so I can continue improving the place....great question.. Hunters are down but there are more reasons than doe tags making population decrease....thx
