Mark, my question is more to why are you expecting the farmers to feed does all year long so you can shoot a buck?
Dale
Perhaps these farmers that you speak of should put their efforts into talking to their farming buddies. Maybe they'll convince them to support the legalization of Sunday hunting, instead of opposing it, and provide more of an opportunity for hunters to kill these crop destroying deer.
If I can not have my cake and eat it too then neither should they.
For your information there is not one active crop growing farm within 15 miles (maybe more) of anywhere I hunt. Most of the deer I kill come from a 3 acre patch of woods surrounded by URBAN communities. Killed over 20 deer there last year. But I do hunt frequently in Delaware, Montgomery, Chester, Berks, Schuykill, Wayne, Pike, Monroe, and Susquehanna counties.
Everywhere I listed that ISN'T in the special regs areas has had a significant decrease in deer over the last 10 years. The special regs areas just keep getting better because nobody hunts here. Private property or limited access mixed with good food sources and fantastic bedding areas make the suburbs optimum whitetail habitat.
Just got back from my daughters in Montgomery County where I used to live and manage a farm so I know that area fairly well. You're right, the deer herd is growing and access is a big problem.
But using your plan for the rest of the state would basically return us to the way things were in the 70's and 80's. That led to an overpopulation of deer, I remember seeing one hell of a browse line near Kinzua in the late 80's.
Your plan gets more total deer statewide, in some places, they will feed on natural stuff in the woods, in others they'll feed on crops or landscaping plants all year just so you can have more deer. Seems to me, you would be getting your cake at the expense of someone who pays for a cake and the deer eat it.
One more day (Sunday) in rifle season wouldn't make a hill of beans difference under your plan, quit trying to switch subjects.
I've no doubt some areas have been hit very hard, I knew guys who had 15 tags for the group and filled 15 tags, wasn't long before they weren't seeing so many deer in their stomping grounds.
It boils down to the fact that the deer numbers we had from the 1970's onward should never have happened, they were simply too high and folks got spoiled seeing deer everywhere. We're paying the price for too many deer and uneven hunting pressure.
