i've hunted 4A since 1973 back in the coves in east/west providence twp, some in clearville, chaneysville areas and brush creek over in fulton. mostly public land but used to be allowed on a couple of nice chunks of private river bottom. i remember the motels in breezewood would be booked for the first week a year in advance. my first year i was on top of the coldest damn mountain overlooking wells tannery and saw probably over a hundred deer, all does. first day you would count hundreds of shots and that was buck only. we hung a lot of deer on the pole from 65-2000. i remember the year after the first combined season, you could see the difference. has been getting steadily worse since. on the plus side, i've taken my best bucks in the past 15 years and now when i see a lone deer back in the thicks, its a good chance its a buck. usually a scrap rack, but at least a buck. problem i have anymore is getting a deer back to the truck from the places i hunt. i hunted some spots this year where i said that it had to be a really nice buck for me to shoot it. deer camps have dried up, including mine. just me and my boys this year and they only hunted the first two days. they saw one deer between them. i tried to like archery hunting but it just doesn't do it for me. i will be wandering around somewhere down there in a few weeks with my TC and maybe i'll get lucky. but late season you have to be really, really lucky to get one back on the mountain. hell all i usually see are chickadees. i hope we have a lot of snow cover this winter so i can do some serious scouting back in the thicks and see where the deer are moving. i see some nice rubs and scrapes back in there so i know they are there, just not a lot anymore.
for public land in 4a they need to stop doe hunting for a few years. but with this cwd thing, the pgc is going in the opposite direction. and the dcnr would never allow it either.
