Fishing is good right now. I guess it started slow this fall, but I didn't go until last week.
Being local, I know a few spots that I never see another guy at. There isn't as many fish, but I don't have to fight for elbow room either. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />
My 6 year old landed a nice fat female last Sunday on his little 5 ft Ugly Stick! That was fun! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />
My brother lives and hunt in SW PA. Deer are all over the place. He took a buck a nd a doe opening day and the grandson took a doe. My son , who lives there, sees 6-8 deer killed on the roads every week, while driving to work. Some areas are shotgun slugs or archery only. Seems to be the availablility of food more than anything. Growing up there, we hunted Clinton CO alot and even then 40-50 years ago, deer numbers were down. In SW PA, there were only a few deer. Now they are over run with them. One thing though, several states have tried the antler restriction, and it has never worked for deer. It is great for elk though.
If God wanted you to walk and carry things on your back, He would not have invented stirrups and pack saddles
That's the other part of the equation, food supply. The liberal tree huggers wouldn't let the loggers salvage a huge swath of timber that a tornado took down 2-3 years ago behind my uncles house, all that wasted timber. Believe they actually filed law suites to prevent the salvage. Mature forest equals small deer populations, I choose to hunt an area of mature forest to try and get away from the crowds and don't expect to see more than a couple of deer a day if any. I've hunted the area for 7 years now and have only seen a small decline in the deer numbers. The deer aren't big and the antlers don't grow huge, but it is a challenge!
Haven't been steelhead fishing in 20 years, now I fish for grouper and tuna <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />
Spitfire, Hunt in Johnstown area, myself 2 daughters, neighbor and his son from Michigan. first day neighbor got a doe in Indiana , we saw nothing, 2nd rain no hunt,3rd day 4 of us in Indiana no deer,4th day got a doe local, 5th day saw 2 deer did not shoot, Saturday saw 5 total deer, Ashley missed 2 shoots across a big field. Thier are very few deer in this area, Alt's program is a flop. My biggest disappointment is Sat. we saw 6 cars on the way to Indiana, about 35 miles, nobody out, was cold,but had 2-3 inches of snow, I thought we would need a traffic cop to park people, i was in SHOCK that nobody was out. This system does not work, never will work and the PGC better come up with a new game plan cause it is now 4th down and 25 yds to a first down. I was in Pittsburgh at a meeting, guys down their saw the same results. I know same area's have more deer than others, but this is bad. I think our sport just got moved to the critical care unit on a breathing machine, the young people are not going to continue with this at this rate.
I hunt the upper Four Mile country of the ANF for bucks......Never saw another hunter save for my son and a friend I took in there.......I get aways from the road and kill bucks every year that I do not manage to miss.....Deer numbers have progressively gone down since the PGC HR initiative....Antler Restrictions have nothing to do with killing does...it was merely a ploy to attempt to justify the Herd Reduction, pointing hunters toward killing mature does, ostensibly under the old saying "you can't eat the horns".....
Logging is still taking place on the ANF....The country I hunt is full of clearcuts in various stages of regeneration and provides a lot of browse.....The Forest Service's main objective here will ALWAYS be the production of veneer black cherry and they want the deer population kept to an absolute minimum.......The Forest Coalition people are losing their lawsuits and the pro bono, law school professors who represent them have to be ready to move on to other "causes", soon, I hope......In this case, having the Federal government on our side is a good thing for both wildlife and hunters alike..... PA's strong deer hunting tradition has changed...More people are staying closer to home, reducing big woods hunting pressures which has vastly improved the hunt quality for those who like to get away from the crowd.....Having said all that, it IS the two week doe season which has reduced the breeding population, not lack of sufficient food.....It has gone too far and the PGC recognizes it......somewhere in between the "old" deer management program and today's lies the solution.....
Three years ago was a particularly tough winter in Central NY and the deer population suffered. For that matter last winter was tough as well. Last year only landowners could get doe tags compared to previous years when most people stood a good chance and landowners two. This year even landowners couldn't get any. The population is definately still on the rebound. Being our proximity to Northern PA and being familar with some farmers in some of the counties mentioned I think alot of what is being experienced in parts of PA is not hunter related.
There is a huge area south of Cherry Grove in the ANF that's going to be logged off soon.
Weather related deer kills ... At a place I hunt in Clinton Co, near Renovo, we used to see 30+ deer a day while pushing the hill sides. Then in the 90's they had a real bad ice storm, and hundreds of deer were found dead at the bottom of the hills. Since then we've been lucky to see 5 deer a day. They still haven't recovered.
Thanks for correcting me as to logging in the ANF. I had no idea it was still happening. This whole thing is a pretty complex issue, and I've certainly learned a lot from this thread.
One thing that I can't help but speculate on, and I know it may offend some, but here goes, at any rate.
You touched on something that I've been bouncing around inside my melon. That is, the change in the distribution of hunters, and the reduction of the tradition of hunting the "big woods". Could it be that part of the cause of folks seeing fewer deer is due, in part, to there being fewer hunters in the woods, but the hunters that are still hunting haven't adapted their methods to cope with the change? I mean, when I was a kid in the '70's, there were so many hunters up around Hearts Content ( Warren County ), that you basically took a stand in a well thought out travel area, and it was nothing to have 100 deer run buy you opening day ( all does, of course, and maybe a spike or forkhorn ). With substantially fewer hunters in the woods moving deer un-naturally, perhaps folks need to start really scouting and patterning deer where they actually feed/bed/scrape as part of the game plan?
Just thinking out loud, and don't intend to offend anyone, or question anyones abilities here. Heck, I'm one of those darn people who quit going North, and hunt the home land. On top of that, I don't even live in PA! No matter what though, PA deer hunting will always be in my blood, and still exites me more than most of the hunting I've done, to include here in AK!
Good point, Jeff......I grew up in Marienville, lived in Sheffield and Warren for many years....Spent some time with the PGC, too.....Been running the woods for close to 50 years now.....there most assuredly are less deer in the ANF.....there are fewer hunters, too, due in large part to growing deer populations in many of the suburban (and urban) areas of PA....a lot of hunters are content to kill deer without the hunt quality which comes from the relative solitude of the big woods......and that's fine.......the whitetail is not in trouble anywhere in PA-its numbers have just plummeted in many parts due to the two week antlerless seasons we've had recently....you would not believe how many fawn pairs, sans the adult doe, are out there........doing the math quickly calculates the effect taking adult does has on fawn regeneration.....
And for me not having as many hunters where I hunt makes my time out there much more enjoyable.....
My buddy is from Warrenton (sp?). He hunts in Norther PA. He said he saw less deer, but they looked bigger. PS. On their last day, his buddy killed the 8 pointer that he had seen on 3 occasions but couldn't get a shot. He said it was a good buck.
I also hunt in 3D - mostly Pike County. My group saw two does Monday and that was it. Five or so years ago it sounded like a war up there. Now the only shooting you here comes from the other side of the Delaware.
Last year an NPS ranger came up to us and asked us if we had seen anything. He said in years past he would have been busy checking deer, but noone was seeing any to shoot.
Definate lack of hunters in the woods this year, never saw another hunter and no shooting after 12 or so. The buck I tagged was hot on the trail of a doe, flat out run down the hill grunting, well didn't make it too far down the hill. Posted a poor pic of the deer in another post.
Deer numbers have progressively gone down since the PGC HR initiative....Antler Restrictions have nothing to do with killing does...it was merely a ploy to attempt to justify the Herd Reduction, pointing hunters toward killing mature does, ostensibly under the old saying "you can't eat the horns".....
Winchesterbob, This couldn't be truer. However, AR was a way to "sugar coat" HR. The PGC knew that alot of hunters determine success by putting "meat on the pole". If they took spikes and fork horns out of the equation they could force some to shoot "does". I can't and won't speak for most areas, but in 4A, I can't justify shooting does. AR can't possibly produce bigger bucks without genes, nutrition and age. Thanks to HR and the issuance of numerous doe tags BUTTON bucks don't age. Unfortunately, some hunters just don't have the patience to be more selective.
Absolutely right you are....Most hunters kill the first deer seen which points to the ludicrous "thinking" employed by the PGC when their newly appointed whitetail guru, Alt, attempted to justify AR by encouraging hunters to just take an adult doe and not worry about antlers....The PGC boys knew this wasn't going to control the killing of little deer but it was the best line they had to attempt to masquerade the true intent of their program which was/is reducing the herd.......
Rather than let Mother Nature regulate deer numbers, the PGC acquiesced to commercial interests and went full speed, resulting in the present state of affairs.....I laugh when I see posted land springing up faster than head lice in a kindergarten class and hear the comments explaining it is happening because of slob hunter practices......It's happening because landowners don't want their deer killed......
We can bitch all we want but nothing will restore deer numbers until the doe season is cut back....having it on the first three days of buck is a good compromise.....will be interesting to see what the PGC does next month at their meeting.....there's a lot of pressure to do something.....
Being a native of Pa., I can relate to what you are seeing, as deer hunting at our camp in Pike county has been a total bust for the past 10 years or so.
Not for the reasons you have brought up however. IMO the reason isn't the liberal doe tags. Rather, it is the lack of food. As the State forest around our cabin has over-matured the past decade or so, the deer have relocated to the swamps and housing developments bordering the State Game Land in order to survive.
Look, Pa is decades behind in game management. Va. where I now live has had very liberal doe regs. for as long as I have lived here (since '82) and we have tons of deer. I will say though, that the state has put in doe restrictions on some of the public hunting lands when the numbers of deer are where they want them.
Bottom line, instead of complaining about the doe regs., start beating on the state to timber the state game lands and you will see a drastic turn around in the quality and quantity of deer you see.
The hunting is so bad at our our Pike county camp that my brother and I went to Ohio this year and skiped the Pa. rifle opener. You want to see what good food sources will do for bucks, take a look at my Ohio bucks thread in the Deer Hunting section.
Tony
You have tons of deer up in NOVA because hunting is limited due to access restrictions. Here in the Shenandoah Valley I see fewer deer every year. My mom's place used to have 15 or 20 deer feeding/crossing regularly and now there is but one old doe. I hadn't the heart to shoot the "last" deer on the place. She must live a lonely life as I've yet to see her with other deer.
Sincerely,
Hobie
"We are all travelers in the wilderness of this world, and the best that we find in our travels is an honest friend." Robert Louis Stevenson
I have friends of mine who tag a buck at G. Richard Thompson WMA every year. As in public land. They have knock the does back there, pretty hard BTW, but good hunters still are tagging bucks.
I have friends of mine who tag a buck at G. Richard Thompson WMA every year. As in public land. They have knock the does back there, pretty hard BTW, but good hunters still are tagging bucks.
They must be really good ... I went there on a Saturday once and counted the trucks in two parking lots. Assuming 1.5 hunters per truck, there were quite possibly more hunters per square mile than there were bucks!
