Pennsylvania Game News - October 2013 - 16

20.3. The only states reasonably close
to us were Rhode Island with 16.5 and
New York with 15.1. Pennsylvania is
38th among states in geographic size,
yet second only to Texas in 2011 in
number of hunters. Texas, however, has
a hunter-per-square-mile rate of 4.4.
Pennsylvania ranked fourth in buckharvested-per-square-mile with a rate
of 2.8 in 2011 (South Carolina, 3.6;
Maryland, 3.4 and West Virginia, 3.2).
We placed sixth in buck harvest with
127,540 (Texas, 309,207; Michigan,
212,791; Wisconsin, 150,839; Georgia, 133,520; and Alabama 130,500).
States participating in the survey reported shooting more antlered bucks
in 2011 than 2010.
Game Commission deer harvest
data document an increase in antlered
buck harvest in each of the past four
years, from 108,330 in 2009 to 133,860
in 2012. Changes to deer hunting over
the past several years, however, makes
measuring more than hunter success,
which is stable, unreliable. General
hunting licenses sales, even antlerless
deer harvests, over this four-year period
also have been relatively stable.
Overall, deer hunting has remained
a steady pursuit over the past few
years, with the exception of annual
deviations in Wildlife Management
Units. Some are always up in harvest,
others are down. Sometimes changes
are related to antlerless allocations.
Other times, we’re unsure. In the 2012
harvest, WMU 1A had a 20 percent
increase, followed by WMU 1B, 17
percent; WMU 2D, 13 percent; WMU
2G, 11 percent; and WMU 3A, 10 percent. Their gains were offset by drops
in WMU 2C, 17 percent; WMU 3D,
13 percent; WMU 2C, 12 percent; and
WMU 5A, 11 percent.
16

Statewide (excepting highly developed WMUs 2B, 5C and 5D),
deer populations are stable and not
negatively impacting WMU forest
regeneration. But as we all well know,
even when it appears deer are balanced
with their habitat, there are always
changes aﬁeld from one year to the
next. They can be related to habitat
changes, hunter distribution, weather
and other factors. Deer aren’t always
where they want to be, but more often than not, they are where they’re
bothered the least and where food and
comfort — and seasonally the opposite
sex — are available.
Your job is to seek out those places
through detective work, in-season
still-hunting, preseason and in-season
scouting. Sometimes the places don’t
change. Other times they change from
season to season, even from week to
week. Look for them. It’ll help you
better understand deer behavior in your
area and hopefully bring you closer to
taking a deer.
We all know weather can inﬂuence
hunting. But few of us were thinking
in May that our late frosts could spell
trouble this fall. Agency foresters are
concerned about late, hard frosts in the
state’s northcentral and northwestern
counties, particularly for white and
chestnut oak acorn yields.
Mast conditions in the forest will
likely be highly variable this fall, according to Dave Gustafson, Forestry
Division chief for the agency’s Bureau
of Habitat Management. “Many parts
of Pennsylvania had a late season frost/
freeze on May 14 that reached from the
Allegheny Plateau all the way south to
the Mason-Dixon Line,” he explained.
“This hard frost hit just as the oaks were
starting to leaf out, and the apples were
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Pennsylvania Game News - October 2013

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