Readers react to deer harvest
Two of the responses we've received to Sunday's article about the 2007-08 Pennsylvania deer harvest:
Alex Kohl of Red Lion says that simple math explains the situation: I just finished reading the deer management article in the Sunday paper and feel that I had to respond to the ongoing theories about why the deer harvest numbers are down in Pennsylvania.
Let's make this simple. The hunters in this state harvested way too many antlerless deer! If we look back through time over the past 40 years, there is simple arithmetic involved. From 2001 to 2007, we had 84 days of doe hunting. From 1970 to 2000, we had 90 days of doe hunting. This is not rocket science.
With the encouragement of the Game Commission, the hunters in this state shot most of our deer. The allocation of all the bonus antlerless licenses over the past 20 years, combined with all the available days of antlerless hunting and the lack of control from the majority of the hunters created the demise of the white-tailed deer herd in Pennsylvania.
The one thing that I am tired of hearing is all the excuses that the Game Commission personnel keep trying feed us as reasoning behind the declining harvest numbers each and every year for the past seven years.
There was a time that most of us I am sure can remember that it was a special event to draw an antlerless license. During that time there was also a law that you could only harvest one deer per year. I am not against the advancement of new and improved ideas for managing the deer herd, but sometimes we our not looking in the best interest of the deer themselves. Any one who spends a fair amount of time in the deer woods would agree, the deer numbers are a mere shadow of what they use to be.
The Game Commission knew by opening a 12-day deer season with anything goes that the hunters could not restrain themselves from harvesting does versus waiting for a buck instead. Anyone who has ever hunted knows that the hunting pressure on the opening day of the Pennsylvania firearms season is far greater on that day than on any other hunting day during the entire season.
There should be no surprise of the outcome over the past seven years. The only thing that we as hunters can hope for is that our pleas do not fall on the deaf ears of the Pennsylvania Game Commission.
If the reality does not set in for them soon, then maybe the reality of decreased license sales will, and maybe the reality of the youth of today pursuing other activities because staring into vacant woods for 10 hours is not too exciting. That translates to not having a future in license fees in the not-so-distant future.
Unfortunately, our future fate of deer hunting is determined by a group of people with too many conflicts of interest clouding their judgment for the best interest of the deer herd.
And Dylan Wisner of Jackson Township simply thinks the deer have caught on to the safe spots: Why is it that every year I read about the deer harvest, the Game Commission never puts in the paper how much land there is that is not even hunted?
With the amount of land today that is posted or private, how many deer do you actually think sit in that land? Where do you think the deer go to? Deer aren’t dumb. They know where they are pressured or not.
So all this land that is posted or private, there is deer in. Why do you think the deer harvest is getting lower? Deer are getting smarter. They are still in the woods, but they aren’t in the woods we hunt. They are in the woods that aren’t hunted nor disturbed.
