PA Deer Harvest Up 4%. Why? Open Discussion
March 19, 2009
Confused? The Pennsylvania Game Commission announced that this year’s dear harvest was up 4% from last season. Here’s a look at the past 11 years total deer harvest numbers.
2008-2009 = 335,850
2007-2008 = 323,070
2006-2007 = 361,560
2005-2006 = 354,390
2004-2005 = 409,320
2003-2004 = 464,890
2002-2003 = 517,529
2001-2002 = 486,014
2000-2001 = 504,600
1999-2000 = 378,592
1998-1999 = 377,000
This calculates out to an 11-year harvest average of 410,256. I should also note that the 517,529 deer taken in the 2002-2003 season was a record.
It’s been roughly over the past ten years that Pennsylvania has implemented a new deer management program to reduce the number of deer. Many have complained that there just aren’t any deer left in Pennsylvania anymore.
We know that weather and hunter participation play as big a role as any in fluctuating deer harvest numbers. Do the figures shown above actually reflect that there are no deer left in Pennsylvania to hunt?
Use this forum to discuss what you think the numbers mean. Please keep it rational.
Tom Remington
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Antler restrictions must be working. Majority of the deer taken must be 3 or four points to a side. So the figures indicate (like I said back in December) More mature Bigger Bucks are being harvested! and Hunter numbers are up as well.
But I guess this still is not enough evidence for the whiners
Hunter numbers are DOWN. You should really learn to know what you are talking about before opening your mouth. The total hunter numbers have declined, and have been at a rate of over double the national average.
The herd is being slaughtered by far too many tags, and the environmentalist nutjobs who’ve taken over at pgc are making it happen to further their idiot biodiveristy extreme agenda. The buck harvest has become a joke, and the doe harvest has steadily declined, although far too high still and continuing the herds decline because 800,000+ doe tags arent being cut.
Antler restrictions were supposed to give us more and bigger bucks. It hasnt because the does that birth the bucks have been slaughtered.
Sorry had the wrong side of the FACTS Hunter TRAPPER numbers have increased 5.4%
mount of increase in new hunters.
In 2006-07, 945,892 general hunting licenses and 26,589 furtaking licenses were sold.
For FY2007-08 a total of 924,448 general hunting licenses were sold with an additional
28,033 furtaker licenses sold. These sales figures represent a loss of 21,444 licensed
hunters or a 2.3% decline and a gain of 1,444 licensed trappers/furtakers or a 5.4%
increase for the fiscal year. Further comparative information on license sale trends can
be found at: http://www.pgc.state.pa.us/pgc/cwp/view.asp?a=460&q=15901
http://209.85.173.132/u/pgc?q=cache:pcG8FxI_fjkJ:www.pgc.state.pa.us/pgc/lib/pgc/PDF/gameannualrpt2008.pdf+Yearly+hunter+participation+figures&cd=3&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&ie=UTF-8
Lacking any other reliable FACTS I have to go with the states report.
Contact: Jerry Feaser of Pennsylvania Game Commission, +1-717-705-6541, PGCNews@state.pa.us
HARRISBURG, Pa., March 18 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — The Pennsylvania Game Commission today reported that hunters harvested an estimated 335,850 deer in the state’s 2008-09 seasons. That’s up four percent from the previous season’s harvest of 323,070.
Any way pull your skirt down your slip is showing.
George on March 27th, 2009 7:57 am
Not much for CHANGE lately myself. How’s it been going for you?
Many don’t have the will to do nothing more than wine. I think it was change that has everyone so unhappy.
You can’t prove to me that the change GA started within the PCG is not working and is better for the health of the herd and for the forests. More new growth is now getting the chance to mature without being browsed off. Habitat for Grouse, Turkey and others.
No, the only Change that would satisfy would to be change back to the way it was. To watch everything get smaller and smaller. Just an inbred herd of tiny deer. Because your “I’m a hunter experience” is 2 or 3 days a year and you Expect, no demand to harvest that inbred yearling spike.After all it’s your God given right .
Either your not from Pa or youre clueless. General license sales are how you determine wether more or less hunters are buying licenses and hunting.
Anything else…bow tags, trapping license etc. Are add ons.
General license sales and therefore hunter numbers have decreased steadily including this year. And from the latest comparison to national trends, our hunter numbers from 2001 to 2006 have declined at over double the national average. OVer 10% decline in that time frame compared to the rest of the country at 4% according to USFW.
George youre one of pgc yesmen that do damage control on all the boards. Youre a complete liar.
There were more and bigger buck before the herd slaughter. When you have half as many, more arent left to grow when 80-90% of the legal buck are still killed, just far fewer of them existing in the first place thanks to excessive doe slaughter.
Real big deal the harvest increased only 4%, when the year before it DECREASED by 22%!
The game commission needs to move to california where all the whackos belong. Eco-nutz have no place in managing our wildlife.
First day the year before was a wash out. Heavy rain in most of the state all day. Fog and rain untill noon the second day. The 2 Day a year hunters didn’t tough out the less than Ideal conditions to even try to harvest. So down 22%. No big science needed hear. Just lazy hunters. Now lets answer the question: up 4% Because Why? I’m still not buying your purely emotional points of view.
Deer Harvest Numbers.
2004-2005 = 409,320
2003-2004 = 464,890
2002-2003 = 517,529
2001-2002 = 486,014
2000-2001 = 504,600
Try not to be hippocritical! Now how many of thoes precious Doe did YOU harvest?
If it was brown it was down. We all laughed with glee. Now that the result we all contributed to has come about, you can’t look for the desired result! All you see is your shot out piece of woods (about 200 yards or less from the parked pickup) All I hear is their just not their any more. All I can say is we Got to go deeper hunt harder.
Please try not to do it from the Bar Stool either, you won’t get any good information from a beer glass. Anyway your what hurts?
It appears George is definatly a PA. resident and actually gets out to hunt more than a couple days. You always hear complaints from those not willing to put forth some effort and it appears 1 or 2 of these guys, probably the same guy, didn’t put forth any effort to research his claim(s), and I’d bet his hunting is similar. If you look at the USFWS report he mentions, it clearly shows PA is above the average hunter decline of 1.4%.
I’ve seen the Pa. Unified Sportsman make this same erronuos claim and they’ve been ask on numerous occasions to back this 4% claim up and they’ve never been able to do it. They try the old bait and switch routine and try to use pieces of different reports and combine them, because the USFWS report totally debunks their claim. When it compares 2001 to 2006 we actually saw an increase. The PGC site only shows “sales” of licenses, not total hunters. Some hunters don’t have to buy a license at all.
Here’s the report for PA http://www.census.gov/prod/2008pubs/fhw06-pa.pdf
In the 15 year trend report http://wsfrprograms.fws.gov/Subpages/NationalSurvey/15_year_trend.htm it says
“Comparing 1991 to 2006 estimates, the number of all hunters declined by 11%. Although the number of all hunters fell, the number of big game hunters was about the same in the 1991 and 2006. Hunting expenditures increased 24% from 1991 to 2006.”
So deer (big game) hunters isn’t where the loss is coming from anyways. I suspect it’s small game.
As for the topic at hand, harvest numbers; I think we’ve gotten to a point that they’ll level out. Harvests can be highly variable from year to year, but if you look at treads over several years, I think we’re back to the mid 90’s harvest numbers. The problem is that back then the deer season was mostly a 2 week period except for an early 4 week archery. Now the season is stretched out over 8 weeks including an early rifle doe season that never existed back then. Those youngsters got spoiled going into the end of that decade and now they can’t cope with fewer deer left for the later, traditional season, so they complain. Hey why not, it’s the easiest thing to do. No learning is necessary!
Here’s another article on the subject.
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/print?id=2749871&type=story
My apologies if the link is not allowed.
Was doing maintenance on the camp over the 4th weekend. In our front field we saw a total (Just on our 10 acres) 6 Buck in velvet that look like they will develop into legal Big Game by the fall. Several Doe with young, one Doe had 2 Fawns scampering around she was caring for. This after a hard ICE covered winter in this area. Reports from my friends with camps in other parts of the state ( I’m in Clinton others are in Potter, McKeen,Cameron and Bradford) are saying the same thing. We are seeing bigger younger Bucks with nice racks.
These guys who are complaining and quitting should just tough it out a while longer. I believe we are turning the corner on this issue.
I’m excited for my Grandson and the younger guys coming up. Quality Deer to harvest and less hunter pressure from lower hunter participation. Now if we could only get rid of the poachers that give the rest of us a bad name!
George/pgc stooly says: “First day the year before was a wash out. Heavy rain in most of the state all day. Fog and rain untill noon the second day. The 2 Day a year hunters didn’t tough out the less than Ideal conditions to even try to harvest. So down 22%.”
Yes, but no mention by you of why it did not go back UP by 22%,lwhich is what it would have needed to do just to be a stable harvest (and should have been even more due to more deer saved the year before due to weather!)
The weather was GREAT last year and the harvest was thourough. Yet a ridiculous low harvest even with over 800,000 doe tags. lmao.
“Try not to be hippocritical! Now how many of thoes precious Doe did YOU harvest?”
1 per year before reduction. None since 2002. So stuff that in your pipe and smoke it. lol.
“Please try not to do it from the Bar Stool either,”
I dont drink. I also probably kill more buck than you do. That does not mean i support a failed program.
” Anyway your what hurts?”
My brain from reading your complete nonsense.
Dan Reeda says: “If you look at the USFWS report he mentions, it clearly shows PA is above the average hunter decline of 1.4%.”
You are a liar and fraud. The national rate of decline from 2001-06 was 4%. USING PGCS LICENSE SALES DATA straight from the website you can see the decline in that same time period was TEN PERCENT. Thats OVER DOUBLE. You used faulthy data that was not actual data but calculated in a vague “survey”. NOT actual data.
BTW, for anyone wanting to know this total dipchit damage control jackass is a pgc employee and goes by the name “renegade” “ghost” “btbowhunter”and about 3 other handles on various message boards. Been kicked off of several for his behaviour as well.
It is also believed that he may be a member of an antihunting organization, though that has yet to be “proven”. He is definately not interested in hunting but pretends to be, so that he may exist on hunting boards and spread his message of environmentalist extremism. He supports deer hunting because and only because large predators cant be reintroduced in highly populated Pa.
A real nutcase this’n folks.
All this from a thinly disguised Gentleman Hunter.
Why the deer numbers went up. if anyone hunted the year before this years 4% would know that it rained for the first few days. Excuse me,it poured. But I will put money on it the deer numbers will be down this year quite a bit. Also if you look at the numbers , Doe harvest took a major drop in harvest numbers. Again it was because of bad weather why the numbers was down. Again look at the doe harvest numbers. Don’t let that 4% and PGC BS you that the numbers are going up. It was because of that bad weather.
It didnt rain the first few days. In fact in my area of pennsylvania it didnt rain at all. Only in 2007. Didnt really matter, because it was only one day and ehd also wiped out the herd in some areas.
And with no excuses the harvest was still pathetic in 2008.
THE NUMBERS POSTED ABOVE ARE VERY MISLEADING. THOSE NUMBERS ARE TOTAL HARVEST NUMBERS. THE GAME COMMISSION USES BUCK HARVEST NUMBER TRENDS TO DETERMINE HERD CHANGES BECAUSE DO TAGS NUMBERS CAN CHANGE.
BUCK HARVEST DROPPED FROM OVER 200,000 BUCK DOWN TO 109-120K RANGE. THE REST OF THE NUMBERS IN THE ABOVE IN THE ARTICLE ARE ANTLERLESS. REASON THE HARVESTS ARE STILL WITHIN ‘AVERAGES’ OVERALL, THAT IS DUE TO HUGE NUMBERS OF INCREASE DOE TAGS IN URBAN AREAS. ONE AREA ROUGHLY THE SIZE OF 2.5 COUNTIES ALONE HAS OVER 100,000 ANTLERLESS TAGS CURRENTLY.
ASIDE FROM THESE URBAN AREAS THAT CONTAIN MANY OFF LIMITS AREAS THAT ACT AS “DEER FACTORIES” THE REST OF THE STATE IS ABYSMAL. PA HAS BECOME A JOKE.
Pa game commission is now currently pushing the idea of deer contraception thanks to the “anti-influence” currently ongoing at pgc. Gona-con is a newly approved by epa formulation that antis are pushing very hard to be accepted by states management agencies. Pa Game Commission is the only one Im aware of that has given favorable commentary and has said they will support and permit rigorous real world testing in state.
Information can be seen on their website under “Fall deer chronicle”. Their cyber periodical that has so much b.s. that it isnt fitten for outhouse fodder.
2009 and another horrible season. When will it end?
Wisconsin guys are beeching about their harvest and creating a fuss from last years harvest, yet it was far higher than its been for several years here in pa, and we here in Pa even have a couple hundred thousand more hunters.
GONA-CON? PGC IS SUPPORTING THE USE OF BIRTH CONTROL NOW? WHY AM I NOT SURPRISED?