Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting Question For PA Deer Hunters???

There are X number of antlerless tags allocated each year.

This past year the total number of antlerless tags decreased a bit. So your theory that "bonus and second round tags" account for an increase in total license sales, doesn't hold up.

Total number of licenses sold has increased a bit each year over the past five years or so, usually a bit over 1 to 2 percent per year.

Some new hunters coming in each year, lots of older hunters do not buy a license every year like us diehards do, which accounts for variations in licenses sold per year. Studies have shown that in several states.

Still far below what was sold 15-20 years ago, but we don't have the number of hunters we had back then for a variety of reasons.

Back then there were still some WWII generation members hunting. They're going at a rapid rate, because the ones left are in their late 80s at a minimum. They're responsible for the "baby boom generation" which kept hunter numbers right up there for many years.

Now the oldest members of that generation are in their late 60s/early 70s, at a minimum and many have quit. High divorce rates with splintered families; Increasing urbanization (fewer people connected to a rural lifestyle, etc); Far more fall sports for kids; And other reasons why hunting is going "out of fashion" to some degree. All add up to fewer hunters these days.

There are deer in huntable numbers in a great many places yet, otherwise annual kills wouldn't have stabilzed some years ago.

They may not be where you want them to be now, but they're out there where many can still find them each fall.