Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting Unsuccessful PA rifle season

And here is another...After 65 years of age, people are dropping out of hunting drastically....So some genius comes up with a carrot to wave in front of their nose....We will let you have a weekend in October, were the over 65 crowd can shoot a Deer...Again, while the Bow crowd can stick a Buck for a month.... and more than one if they don't stick good....you old farts can only shoot a Doe....with a purchased Doe tag.....

Gotta love it or you wouldn't play...and many are losing the love...

The deer population is still way down from everything I see, and hear spoken locally here in 4A. Sure, there are small pockets of underpressured type "field deer" here and there , but just because it's private doesn't mean it's holding alot of deer. Hard to blame it on the orange army when there's a lack there of, but still....you see some pieces of private property with very low pressure decline yr after yr.
A friend has a small, but generally productive property that is surrounded by private, and the back side butts up to a 10,000 acre gun club with like 15 members. His hunting has come to the point he's lucky to see a buck, and I believe he saw like 10 deer during season and he sat all day for 6-7 days. I hunted SGL #49 near Amaranth, and heard a fair amount of shooting the first day, but only saw 4 does . Had to work Sunday, but was able to return and take a big doe the third day from #49.

We need to drink a beer and bitch together.

We own a bit of land, been in my family since 1957.

I grew up hunting with my step dad, and except for 3 pricks that
didn't allow hunting, we ran all over a 7 mile long ridge.
Ask to hunt deer, small game we mostly just hunted.

Run into a farmer/landowner, standing around for an hour catching up.
They usually seemed slightly annoyed when they ask, "Why don't you ever
come hunt deer with us?" After the first day, many drove and the more the merrier.

We didn't do big party drive hunting, so just went our way.

Point is, I only know a few of those landowners now.
Most farms are chopped. Very few would allow me to hunt.

So now, we have been hunting the aforementioned land, for about 20 years.
Until then, it had never been posted. (Yep, we're pricks now)
And too many hunts are ruined for me because of trespassers.
After I get them moving, I'm done hunting. The funds over.

Another PGC gripe is that issue.
Until recently, the did not support landowners. At all.
Lip service. Reminding you to ask permission.
But they would do nothing about trespassing hunters.

I had a guy tell me, "Those $300 fines on your sign, it's a joke. People
almost never call the cops. If you do, often I can beat it in court.
If I lose, the fine for simple trespass is $50. $300 only applies if I damage
or steal property. Commit another crime.
So, if I got a $50 fine every other
year, that's $25/year. And I can hunt the whole dam state. Beats any lease
or paying taxes!"

And he was right.

You live near Amaranth?

It's the same here. Private land all over you could hunt when I was young. There was still quite a bit that wasn't posted and common practice was that if it wasn't, you could hunt it with no need to ask permission. Beyond that, much of the land that was posted could be hunted if you just asked. Now it's pretty much all posted and damn tough to get permission unless you know somebody. The difference is trophy bucks were weren't all the rage, end all be all back then. Nobody had heard of QDM. Any legal buck was a good buck and farmers largely looked at them as pests that ate their crops so didn't mind people killing them. The whole trophy hunter QDM, big bucks or bust craze killed all that. Hunters have been their own worst enemies.

We used to have spots on private land in 4A where we could sit the first morning and you were basically guaranteed at least a doe by 9am the first morning.

It used to sound like a war zone the first 2 days of rifle season.

Boy have times changed.

Funny...

In the same vein, I have what's left of my Grandparents farm...56 acres....Years ago a lady was kind enough to practically give it back to me. Anyway, don't post it and kind of figure it may be my Alamo. Rarely hunt it, but one time went up to poke around...Got on the adjoining property and knew it, but close to the line...Soon I was getting yelled at and approached. "You have permission to hunt here?" "No." "Then get off." "You hunt over there?" I asked..."Yes, I do." Well then stay off of it from now on, because I own that." Gives me a look and says, "You that Neil boy, Gene and Daisy's Grandson? Bought it back from ......." "Yes" "Why didn't you say so? Good luck."

The public land that had deer when I moved here tp PA 50 years ago has been hunted so hard by people driving deer., that the deer have moved to farmland that does not allow hunting except for family members...the deer are also staying in spots like wooded areas at highway intersections that are too small for hunters.. I don't hunt Deer anymore because of my age but it is really sad what the hunters have done to the Deer hunting.. if i wanted to hunt I would go to WV where My sister owns 800 acres of prime land 300 of it is prime deer forest.. there are usually 4 or 5,8 point bucks there .

That sounds sad. I've only hunted PA once in '99, but even back then folks were talking about how good it once was and how bad it sucked.

Us? We had our best year ever. 5 of us brought 8 to the pole. 3 were nice 8 point bucks. I'm in Zone 1 in KY.

You problem is not COVID. It isn't seasons running together. We have Archery from Sept thru to January, and it doesn't change the November rifle hunt a bit.

The problems in PA as I see it are:

1) Long-standing mismanagement.
2) Over browsing and lack of good habitat.

There is a sweet spot in the life of forests that favor whitetails. For a lot of PA, that sweet spot has gone. There just isn't enough browse to support deer.

Here in KY, we had the Feds come in and pay farmers to permanently cease tobacco cultivation. Those that took the money either let their land go fallow or converted to beef production. All those empty farms and empty land have been a major boon to whitetails. We're now allowed as many antlerless deer as we want. It's a golden time to be a whitetail hunter in northern KY.

That's not to say this is forever. I hunted other patches of KY where they were having your bad luck. It all boiled down to the same things:

1) Past over-hunting
2) Mismanagement by the state
3) Over browsing and lack of good habitat.

I hope most people reading this arent believing a few, crying about the good old days. The areas of pa I hunt are as diverse in types of habitat that you will find. From 2a to 2c to 2d you will find just about every type of habitat that this state has to offer, they all have one thing in common. Tons of deer. People i talk to in every part of the state who know how to hunt also say the same. I actually think it's a shame that hunters are limited to 3 antler less tags unless they find a dmap zone. The deer are there for the taking and they need shot to preserve what's left of the habitat. And yes, I hunt state forest, gamelands and private. Matter of fact my land and almost all of my neighbors is open to anyone who asks...... Sorry if the stump you sat on 200 yards from the car doesn't produce like it did 40 years ago. .....ok , flame away!

You've hunted here once. There is no problem. You have no idea what your talking about.

Do you mean people that put Wolf and Biden into office aren't bright enough to find deer?

Sounds about right

Guess it all comes down to what part of the state one is hunting in. Used to hunt adjoining areas in SE Lackawanna County/Springbrook and NE Luzerne County/Suscon and Thornhurst in the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s. Could count 200 shots by 9am on opening day and another 100 shots or so during the course of the day. Now 20 to 25 shots the whole day. Granted hunter numbers are not what they used to be, but something else has also changed. The deer herd is not anywhere near what it used to be in this area. Hunting 2 or 3 days without seeing a tail can be discouraging. Lots of bears, there were a couple regularly being seen hanging around town.

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.

Have you ever hunted with, or even shot a crossbow? After almost three seasons with one, I can assure you there’s no magic in one. While they are decidedly easier to shoot accurately, there’s no ballistic edge to them, and no range advantage over compounds. Don’t fall for the marketing hype showing them fired from a benchrest at distant targets.The high arc and susceptibility to wind deflection and contact with brush remain, as does the need to wait for a broadside shot and avoid heavy bones in most cases. They’re also noisy, and if anyone ever gets a second shot with one, it’d be a miracle. Check the kill figures from the PGC before you decide on how they’re hurting your hunting.

I talked with a “Professional Bowhunter” from Kentucky once (which apparently meant he paid a fee, and got a wallet card) who was all up in arms about his state allowing rifle hunting during the rut. Said it was going to ruin deer hunting in KY. That was 20 years ago, and KY has a reputation for trophy bucks that rivals some of the better-know states. In reality, he was just being selfish and wanting it all his way, typical of people who hunt or fish one way, and would like to exclude others from access to the land or water they use.

One thing I have noticed on the small public parcel I hunt here is that most hunters put in a few hours in the morning, and then leave. I hunt about a mile back, and when I come out around noon, the parking lot is mostly or entirely empty. A few days into the season I may have the whole 600 plus acres to myself. Same thing goes during the archery season, except there are far fewer hunters to begin with. Not going to kill many deer hunting that way. I put in 12 half-days with my xbow before I killed a small buck, and only saw three other deer total, one of which offered a poor shot, which I declined. Saw some deer on the rifle opener, including three bucks, but had no shot. Been back about 5 times since, and haven’t seen a hair. I strongly suspect they’ve gone to heavy cover, and/or private land, and also become nocturnal, so if I really want more deer, I believe I’m gonna have to hit the bushes instead of sitting and waiting for one to come by.

This right here he doesn't have a clue

No flames from here....Pa has more than a few great areas to hunt Deer, some of which are on GL...some on National and State Forests....but for the most part private has become locked up. The GC makes some mistakes, but some of the GL have been manipulated into excellent habitats with.food plots and timber cutting....they hold some big Deer..The GC deserves recognition when deserved and some of those GL are huge....not rare to be 5,000 acres plus...most of which don’t see a hunters footprint....Pa Bucks are getting more impressive each year. We have no shortage of great areas....and getting away from others is easy if one can move off the road a quarter mile...and lately that isn’t usually necessary because Pa is no longer made up of dedicated rifle hunters...Many dedicated bow hunters, but not so much with the rifles.

A mistake the GC does make is limiting access to much of the back country....some of that country is rugged and isolated....takes a tough person to get one out from 2 plus miles back in...and Pa hunters age average is going the wrong way.

Shaman: Kentucky is a great Deer hunting State..but you are mostly guessing and guessing wrong when it comes to Pa. Pa has more of a hunter problem than a Deer habitat problem. There are many places that will put your little oasis to shame...and it won’t sound like the war zone you often describe when the season opens. Thanks, but I’ll take Pa before your individual particularly described version of Deer hunting.

Which may change with CWD....more I read about it, the more I’m coming to understand how serious it is. In that it hits the 4 plus year old Deer the hardest. You will have few big Bucks if the mature ones are dying predominantly from disease before you can shoot them.

I will defer to your opinion, sir.

It's just that for the better part of 20 years I heard PA guys gripe about how good it used to be and how bad it was now. A lot of fellows I knew and some of them on here just gave up on PA.

One of the things folks complained loudest about was how the deer had completely eaten the lower browse. From standing, you could hardly see 20 yards, but if you knelt down, you could see forever. I saw some of that while hunting near East Brady.

I'm perfectly happy to retract my statements.


You've piqued my curiosity: what do you see as the problems with hunters contributing to this.

Pappy348,

You make some valid points re the Crossbow...I’ll make this one...I know people who have bought them...stuck a “scope” on them..since when did scopes become part of archery...Answer...when crossbows became the next big archery thing...

Quickly sighted them in and were out shooting Deer the next day. All that other stuff....while true has nothing to do with how easy it is to become proficient compared to other forms of archery....

A good archer has to put in the time to become skilled... you buy skill with the crossbow..