10 Best Single Pin Hunting Sight

Best Single Pin Hunting Sight in 2023

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Pennsylvania Deer Hunting Down the Drain? More States to Follow?

This is a paper that I wrote in a cause and effect format for my college class. Pennsylvania white-tail hunting is faltering and I believe that there are more states to follow.

According to my father and older editions of the Pennsylvania Game Commission Handbook, prior to the late 1990s, the rifle hunting seasons for buck and doe in Pennsylvania were separate. Buck season started the Monday following Thanksgiving and ran until the second Saturday from that day. Then doe season opened the following Monday for only three days. Therefore, hunters only had a couple of days to harvest a doe which meant not many doe were killed. However, in the late 1990s different sections of Pennsylvania, Western PA being one of them, began to combine the buck and doe seasons. This is one of the major causes of the regression of the deer population because now hunters have two and a half weeks to harvest a doe instead of just three days. Therefore, a lot more doe are killed each and every year.

Another cause of the declination of the deer population is the horn restriction that was placed on buck hunting, which also occurred in the late 1990s. In much of Western Pennsylvania a buck is required to have at least four points on one side of its rack. However, in more mountainous regions the restriction is only three points to one side. Nevertheless, I feel that the horn restriction, which was instated by the Pennsylvania Game Commission, has inevitably hurt the doe population of our area. Think about it. The likely hood of most hunters seeing multiple shooter bucks in the couple days that most hunters hunt is unlikely. In knowing this, most hunters that I know will not wait to see a buck anymore, they just harvest the first doe that they see. Therefore you have way too many hunters killing off doe, which inevitably kills bucks and other deer in which that doe may have given birth to.

Another cause of the declination of the deer population can be credited to the very large amount of bonus tags that are given out every year. I personally feel that every hunter in Pennsylvania should be entitled to the right to harvest one deer per year, whether it be a buck or doe. However, the game commission seems to hand out bonus tags for doe as if they were throwing candy to kids in a parade.

Although the declination of the deer population has just been described as an effect of multiple causes, it can be considered the cause of a whole new mess of issues that is having a negative effect on whitetail hunting in Pennsylvania. Due to the declination in population of deer, the population of hunters will eventually begin to plummet. Less and less people will go hunting which means that less and less younger generations will be introduced to the sport of Whitetail Deer Hunting.

An additional issue that is turning hunters off of deer hunting is the amount of posted property that restricts a hunters domain greatly. Although I agree that if a person has purchased property with his or her hard earned money they have a right to post it, I do not agree with the reasons that most of these people post their property for. Too many landowners think that they are going to manage the deer herd on their property. The sad thing is that these landowners do not understand the usefulness of allowing hunters on their property. I feel that most of these landowners watch too much of what I like to call deer porn, or so-called sport hunting on television. These landowners do not understand that a deer herd is not going to just stay on their 350 acre lot of land. Deer move all over, even miles from where they were born.

All of these factors are leading to the declination of deer hunting in Western Pennsylvania. This is bad, not just for the hunters of the area, but for anyone who drives a car or owns a farm or garden as well. If you think about it, if everyone stops hunting not only will the population of deer explode, but it will also be increasingly dangerous driving on highways surrounded by wood lots. Farmers and garden owners would also begin to endure crop damages that may equate up to thousands of dollars in losses due to the over population of deer. Something needs to be done about the declination of not only the amount of deer in Western PA but also about the decrease in hunt-able land. The future of Western Pennsylvania whitetail hunting lies in the Pennsylvania Game Commission's hands, hopefully they don't drop the ball.

If you look at the issue as a whole, it is easy to see that it is just one very long cycle. If the deer population would increase greatly, the game commission would probably push for a longer season and more bonus tags to be released. Like stated before, I have been hunting Whitetail Deer since 2002, but have been scouting and hunting with my dad since I was very young. I personally feel that hunting is not just about killing, if it was then it would be called killing or shooting, not hunting. However, many people do not feel the same as I and kill an excessive number of deer every season just to say that they did it. I feel that it is not only the game commission's fault that deer hunting is declining but it is also our fault as hunters. We need to take the initiative, we need to call for a change, we need to fix our problem before it destroys whitetail hunting permanently.

Sources:
Mark Donaldson, Personal Interview, 28 Jun 2020

Don Bright, Personal Interview, 27 Jun 2020

Pennsylvania Game Commission, Pennsylvania Game Commission Handbook 1987-1999 Editions: "Season Dates".