I think the PGC should do away with doe tags all together. Raise the price of a license by $6.70. Then change the buck tag on your license to an "Either Sex Tag". Open hunting season on October 1st and close it on February 28th. Use any means of hunting deer you would like during that time but harvest only one deer per person.
In my opinion the majority of hunters will still use that tag for a buck. This will leave more doe to survive and breed. The PGC will also have more revenue from the overall license increase than they make from the "Antlerless Tag" sales.
If you want to kill more than one deer per year, plan a trip out of state.
Special regs areas to remain special regs areas as in place now.
Deer numbers in Ag areas would explode!
Originally Posted by MarkFed
yup
Mark, my question is more to why are you expecting the farmers to feed does all year long so you can shoot a buck? That's money out of his pocket to support your habit. Increasing the deer herd is certainly changing something.
Yeah there are programs to help with deer damage but there are problems. I hunted a red tag farm in Lehigh about 4 times, saw 2 deer after legal shooting hours. His farm was surrounded on 3 sides by posted ground. I'm not sure if they can bait now, then they couldn't.
Farmers can shoot for crop damage but it's hassle and most don't have the time to do it.
The problem as I see it isn't too few deer, it's a distribution problem. Both hunting pressure and deer numbers.
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.
Your being kind of rough on the Pa farmer. Deer cost our farm quite a bit of income each year due to crop damage. We let a reasonable amount of friends/nieghbors hunt our ground, but everyone knows deer change their habits in the fall so not as many deer are killed as you would think.
