Pennsylvania Game News - September 2020 - 8

even another large buck he didn't even
know was in the area."
Wallingford said the adult proportion
of the buck harvest has never been larger
than in the 2019-20 seasons. And he isn't
ready to distinguish it as the high-water
mark.
"We'll continue to collect data to see
what happens next," he said.
What seems odd about the majority of
bucks harvested being older is that there's
an expectation for the older boys to be
cagier, disciplined from previous seasons.
"Once a deer lives through its first hunting season, it learns the 'safe places,' but
it is not a conscious decision," explained
Jeannine Fleegle, agency deer biologist.
"And we now know from research that
deer move around during hunting season
regardless. It's a cat-and-mouse game - a
combination of luck and error that leads to
the harvest of an antlered deer."
Antler restrictions also have reduced
the pressure on younger bucks because
those with fork-horn or smaller racks
are generally protected statewide, and
barely legal bucks are harder to identify
as legal. The overwhelming majority of
hunters are shooting no-doubt-about-it
bucks that usually are at least 2 ½ years
old. It's why there are more older bucks at
processors than before antler restrictions,
Wallingford said.
Prior to antler restrictions, most bucks
in Pennsylvania were harvested at 1 ½
years old, when they were sporting their
first set of antlers. Eighty percent of the
buck population was harvested annually.
Now, about a third of the yearling-buck
population and two-thirds of the adult
bucks comprise the harvest.
Deer populations are similar to those
in the 1990s. What's different are hunter
numbers, and that's what is creating the
8

demand for more hunting opportunities.
Antler restrictions, on the other hand, are
a product of hunter preference; 64 percent
of hunters supported them in the Game
Commission's 2014 Deer Hunter Survey.
The conclusions of hunters after deer
seasons close this license-year surely will
be interesting. So much change is about
to occur in deer hunting that no one will
be without an assessment.

ARCHERY ARMY

In the 2019-20 archery deer seasons,
hunters took 145,908 deer, including
74,190 bucks. That topped 2018-19's
archery harvest of 110,719 deer, including
54,350 bucks, but the harvest likely was
impacted by unseasonably warm weather
and rain.
Pennsylvania again set a new archery
license sales record in 2019-20, issuing
more than 340,800 licenses, up from a
previous record of 335,732 in 2018-19.
As recently as 2009, the agency was selling 286,397.
But these statewide totals still don't
take into account how many bowhunters the Commonwealth has, because
combination licenses, which provide
archery privileges, account for more than
130,000 additional licenses sold to junior
and senior hunters. Bowhunters probably
represent about 50 percent of all Pennsylvania deer hunters, according to 2017
Deer Hunter Survey responses.
Between the agency's 2014 and 2017
Deer Hunter Surveys, crossbow hunters surpassed vertical-bow hunters,
Rosenberry said. It translated into more
of the archery harvest being taken with
crossbows.
"In our latest archery seasons, 65
percent of the harvest was taken with
crossbows," Rosenberry said. "To date,
Pennsylvania Game News - September 2020

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