[ Home | TOC | Search | Post | Reply | Next | Previous | Up ]
From: concerned hunter
Date: 11/15/2002
Time: 9:07:59 AM
Remote Name: 206.31.132.51
I am from upstate NY. I will be hunting for deer again this year in southern Potter County, PA. I have figured that since the success rate of killing a buck with a gun in PA is 1 in 7.4, (according to the PGC figures of 1 million hunters and 160,000 bucks taken during rifle season) ---- then for southern Potter County public land hunting it is probably about 1 in 8 or so. (rough guess) because of the fewer deer. Anyway, with the antler restrictions in place my chances have dropped even more to about 1 in 15, or worse. Nevertheless, I am hopeful. I just like being in the big woods and will spend my $100 to do it. My Dad and my uncle along with others, including myself, all hunt out of our 115 year old ancestral farm homestead that we now use as a spot to stay while we hunt and fish on southern Potter County public lands, and occasionally around the farm. Most of these individuals have only killed four or five "rack" bucks a piece in their 30 or so years of hunting the public big woods. We stand hunt mostly mixed with an occassional drive later in the week.
Bottom line is that I enjoy killing spikes and four pointers, it makes the rack buck seem like something more special and elusive. After all ----- southern Potter is not the Perlitz ranch in Texas, ---- nor will it ever be. Why anyone would try to enforce their aesthetic deer hunting preferences upon the masses is beyond me --- but I don't like it. I do not believe in excessive doe kill either, I think the Game commission has gone overboard and are not speaking in a representative or necessarily objective fashion with these new laws. The acid rain may be the real culprit behind the forest regrowth problems ( at least a substantial part ) according to studues at Penn State. When it comes to something like antler restrictions it should be a county by county vote, where only the licensed hunters in that county can decide on the standard, ------ because it IS essentially an aesthetic rather than a biological standard. I think they figure that if more people cannot kill bucks, then they will kill does instead, which is what the PGCs goal seems to be as of late. The big fact behind the antler restrictions that most do not understand is that at about 4 1/2 years most bucks become nocturnal and essentially un-touchable to the everyday deer hunter. In the end there may be more 2 1/2 year old bucks running around ( I say maybe because unlike controlled deer ranches where these programs seem to work, on public land there is an unlimited number of hunters to harvest the 2 1/2 year old bucks) But what is the real cost of all this. Even if the 8 point becomes as standard as a 4 point ----- (which I doublt it will) where will the magic elusiveness gone of killing one. The "Wow did you see the eight pointer hanging down at the lazy J camp". Sure next year in the season of 2003 there will be more rack bucks around but every year after that the numer should be essentially the same as this year or last year if you carefully look at the math behind this scheme. Any way that is just one mans opinion.