I A BY JOE KOSACK P ENNSYLVANIA'S NEW SLATE of deer seasons will be highlighted by the one-two punch of a Saturday-Sunday firearms season opening weekend - the first in well over a century. Barring bad weather, the back-to-back high-pressure hunting days could contend annually for the best days of the season to take a buck. But the new wrinkles don't stop there. The state's longstanding six-week archery season was extended an extra week to allow bowhunting deeper into the rut. There's even a change in tagging requirements that will allow properly licensed hunters to take another whitetail before tagging their first. Deer hunting will be different this fall and winter. But it's important to point out that the backbone of the firearms seasonal structure will stay the same. Although there was much discussion to switch back to statewide concurrent hunting in the firearms season, it didn't happen. So, 10 WMUs will offer concurrent hunting for antlered and antlerless deer during the D E E R firearms season. The remaining 13 will be limited to antlered deer-only hunting from the opening day through the first Friday, followed by concurrent antlered and antlerless deer hunting from the second Saturday through the last day of season. In all WMUs, the exception to use Deer Management Assistance Program (DMAP) permits to take antlerless deer during the first week remains in place. The incoming changes provide even more opportunity for Penn's Woods' deer hunters, particularly buck hunters, who are coming off one heck of a season. The 2019-20 statewide buck harvest jumped 10 percent. It followed a 2018-19 license year in which weather conspired to reduce the firearms season opening-day buck harvest and limit the take of bucks by bowhunters. The resulting carryover of additional bucks sweetened the pot for hunters, and the 74,190 bucks bowhunters took in 2019-20 set a Pennsylvania record. Tracking Pennsylvania's annual overall buck harvest over the past three years F O R E C A S T G TIME INATING THE HARVEST SEPTEMBER 2020 3