Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting Pa Rifle season 2023

I prefer to hunt a deer one on one with them in their natural patterns.

I agree Teeder

Your state and your tradition and I really don’t care how others hunt. However when you get to a spot and go in only to have a drive go through 2 hours later is frustrating. Even more frustration when the [bleep] are parked behind and in front of your truck. We are talking 640,000 acres of public land. Just plain ignorant

And I’m tempering what I really think

we used to have deer drives, but we (10 of us) have killed some deer. it was a good practice to move the deer. i don't how many i shot when i was alone and the drivers showed up. today a guy goes out about 50-100 yards from the trail and sits in his tree stand.

being disabled (the right arm/leg are disabled due to a bad stroke), i go about 50 - 60 yards from the trail into a ground blind. before the stroke, i go about a 1 or 2 miles from the trail to hunt deer. i passed up some good sized bucks on archery season. i don't do archery anymore, i'm a meat hunter.

I'm not going far from the truck this season either but that's due to a torn meniscus

Two things: Just because I don't do drives doesn't mean I sit on my ass all day 50-100 yards off the trail. There's no rule that says you can't take "meat" with archery equipment. I prefer to take a doe in early archery season. I just don't always get it done depending on circumstances.

That's what cortizone shots are for!

I have torn meniscus in both knees, but I still did a 11 mile loop in the ANF the first day of bear.
(of course my ass was paying for it the next two days)

I bet you did pay for that!

I’ve been sitting in a location when someone puts on a drive. I figure I have as good a chance of seeing deer as they do. And I’ve seen plenty of deer sneak back thru the drivers or out the side. Again a good chance of me seeing them if I’m there. I won’t purposely jump into someone’s drive but if I’m already there, well that’s the way it goes. And sometimes when they drive the next patch of woods, deer come into the patch they just drove.

Makes for a much more interesting day when I get to see deer and not just the same patch of trees all day. My 2 cents.

Can’t speak to the parking, that’s just rude on their part.

Dale

If they parked you in, that was ignorant. Beyond that, how would they know what direction you headed and where you were sitting on 640,000 acres? Even if they would somehow figure where you were, the drive was already planned out with watchers already in place or walking in, somewhere down the line.

Chances are if they figured they were putting on a drive somewhere through where you were sitting they'd be more aggravated with that than you were with them, because there's a very good chance you would see or shoot a deer off of their drive.

It works like Dale K stated above. I wouldn't want a drive coming through right after daylight, but soon as things are slow I'd welcome the sound of a drive somewhere in my area. Used to happen all the time around here and it moved deer. We always welcomed it after about the 2cnd day when deer tighten up and lock down.

Huh?

Man, I'd love to get in front of someone else's deer drive; every chance I could.

Nothing like a good ol' deer drive to get the deer up and movin.'

Yeah, I'm gonna find out tomorrow. Me and some guys from work are doing a brown=down day. Will see how it goes.

We call them "pothunters". The guys driving often will have something unkind to say to them. I give it back to them if I've been sitting there for hours and a drive just happens through

Think on these numbers and realize what the Pa GC has done to the great Pa Rifle Deer season tradition.....7 weeks or so of archery....mostly crossbows these days....two weeks of rifle. The Pa GC loves the silent killers.

"Similar to past years, the regular firearms deer season accounted for the greatest part of the harvest figures. Firearms hunters took 251,520 deer, with 87,190 of those being bucks and the remaining 164,340 being antlerless.

Bowhunters accounted for a little over a third of the total deer harvest, taking 145,640 whitetails (75,770 bucks and 69,870 antlerless deer) with either bows or crossbows."

Come rifle season over 50% of the Bucks are gone.

And while point restrictions worked....we are killing much bigger and older bucks. It resulted in more posted land than any thing else the GC could have come up with.

The GC has become the keepers of the Raptors. Last time I looked we don't hunt them. One would think the Audubon Society would take them under their wing. Then with trapping almost dead and the nest and egg robbers having their way....let's add to it and release Fishers.

Let make the law purple paint on trees indicates this land is posted. What happens when someone else buys that land and wants to allow hunting? Are they supposed to go and repaint the trees another color? Or maybe people with just think it is still off limits and not hunt.

The Pa GC has turned into an arm of the left wing Pa politicians.

I can attest to the private land being posted. Being born and raised in the woods of central Florida everything down here that is private is posted. I was completely shocked when I started hunting pa back in the mid 2000s. Private property was basically open to the public for hunting with landowner encouragement to boot.
Slowly over time more and more land is being posted with the passing of the torch to the next generation. It's sad. Pa is turning into a pay to play state just like Florida.
Base camp leasing and the like are not helping

In 7 days of hunting, my group of 4 saw 6 or 7 fisher.

We also saw more partridge than years past. Not Maine numbers but more.

The GC hunter/landowner relationship program has been another failure. How many mistakes....or were they?....can one make without it becoming obvious. If any think the left has not got into the Pa GC tent, they are not trying hard.

I literally had counties I could essentially roam. Today they are essentially posted solid....and used by few. Have 56 acres of my own which has become my Alamo. Unless I'm willing to travel to the North State Land country. Which isn't a bad option.

"The Pa GC has turned into an arm of the left wing Pa politicians."

As has the game commissions in most states.

The boys went to our old stomping grounds this morning.

They saw 3 between them. One sublegal buck and a doe and this 8 just a little after daybreak

300 win mag and Sierra 180gr reloads


I showed up and pushed around for them and saw 6 passed a small doe,

Nice! All I did today was miss a Doe that ran past me at 45 yards. 😵‍💫

Nice one!