Pennsylvania Game News - September 2008 - 58

ARCHERS need to be selective with their shots; pick an opening and come to the same anchor point with each shot. If a deer doesn’t offer you a broadside or quartering-away shot while it’s in your effective range, then it’s a no-shoot situation. Those do exist, you know. Why risk wounding a deer? Sure, plenty of bowhunters have killed deer standing at less-than-perfect angles. Truth be told, I’ve done it myself. But the odds say those shots are just as likely, or even more likely, to result in a wounded deer than a dead deer. Be selective. The Deer In Pennsylvania, any antlerless deer may legally be harvested as long as you have a valid antlerless deer license or DMAP permit for the area in which you are hunting. So in terms of being selective on antlerless deer, the law requires you to determine only that the deer has no antlers, or at least no one antler that’s three or more inches long or has two points on it. But does that mean you should shoot any deer that meets those requirements? That’s certainly an individual question each hunter must answer for himself or herself. I would suggest that you don’t want to shoot a button buck, because then you’re killing a deer that could one day become a trophy, nor do you want to shoot a young doe, because you’re really not going to get very much meat out of it. Antlerless tags, 58 in my opinion, are best suited for adult does. And picking them out of the herd is where you have to be selective. Generally speaking, a lone deer, or the first deer to enter an empty field, is likely to be a button buck. If you see one of these deer, look it over very carefully to see if it has little buttons on its head. Also study its body. A button buck or doe of the year typically will have features — snout, legs and body — that appear short and stubby. By comparison, adult does have long snouts, long legs and long bodies. Side by side, these deer are easy to tell apart. You have to look over enough deer so that when one comes along by itself you can judge its body characteristics without having a deer standing next to it for comparison. When it comes to being selective on bucks, hunters once again have to determine what their goals are. Except for junior license holders, people who hold disabled-hunter permits, and state residents on active duty in the military, you have to abide by Pennsylvania’s antler restrictions. In Wildlife Management Units 1A, 1B, 2A, 2B and 2D, bucks must have at least four points on one antler to be legal. In all other WMUs, legal must have at least three points on one antler. A point is a one-inch or longer protrusion from the main beam of an antler. The beam itself counts as one point, too. If all you’re after is a legal kill, then study the rack of an approaching buck and make sure it has the right number of points for the unit in which you’re hunting. But if your goal is to shoot only mature bucks, then you need to be a little more selective. The buck I shot in Chester County in 2005 clearly was a legal buck. It had five points on each antler, and it needed to have three on only one of them. But once I examined it, it was clear this was a young deer that probably would have been a heckuva GAME NEWS

Pennsylvania Game News - September 2008

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