doe permits

[Arrowcraft]

Years ago I remember that drawing a doe permit was like hitting the power ball. Today if some one does not get one they have a fit. these are the same people that go to the same area every year and harvest doe after doe then complain that there are no deer left! . I live in massachusetts and hunt primarily in the berkshire hills and have seen a steady decline in deer numbers over the last 25 years! it breaks my heart .There are also many more predators now . I would love to see them have a 2year moratorium on doe permits followed by if you draw one you are not eligible to apply but every other year, maybe then the numbers of deer both does and bucks will make a come back .
--------------- Black Wolf 68" 57#@28
                 Tall Tines 60" 52#@28

[fnshtr]

   

Lots of different opinions on deer management. Quantity versus quality as the goal is one thing that divide hunters in their views.

We have always had a good healthy herd in WV with good quantity... some want stricter buck limits and/or antler restrictions and liberal doe limits in order to have more mature bucks to hunt.

The insurance lobby and agriculture groups usually want the population reduced.

Less quantity is usually seen as the means for better quality.

Personally, I'm not a "trophy" hunter, so I prefer quantity, as long as the herd is healthy. My family eats about 6 deer per year. I only bow hunt by choice.

Lots of opinions.

[DSP]

I live in PA and have been saying the exact same thing for years. Most of our local townsfolk(a.k.a. trespassing, entitled, jackholes) average 3-6 tags per person in multiple counties! I grew up in a poor family of 7 and know damn well it doesn't take twelve deer to feed a family of 3. To make it even worse, I have ran across quite a few who either don't like deer meat or have wives and kids who don't so they shoot 3+ deer and either let them lay(I have personally witnessed this) or give them away.  Also pervasive in this area is the "If it's brown it's down" attitude. Shoot a spike or 4 point when only 6 or 8 points can be harvested no problem, cut the rack off and leave the deer to rot. Like you said, these are the exact same people who complain that each year there are less deer and call my father and other farmers around him a$$holes for posting their property in an effort to preserve the remaining deer population. I have found that in hunting like most everything else in life, that really only about 10% of the people involved are ethical, intelligent and actually give a damn about what they are doing. I have met some great hunters and better men over the years but sadly the majority have been pretty sick in the head. I sincerely hope that other parts of the country are populated by better men and women than the "hunters" we have around here.
 

Originally posted by fnshtr:
       

We have always had a good healthy herd in WV with good quantity... some want stricter buck limits and/or antler restrictions and liberal doe limits in order to have more mature bucks to hunt.

The insurance lobby and agriculture groups usually want the population reduced.

Less quantity is usually seen as the means for better quality.


Lots of opinions.

I love West Virginia and I hope for your sake they do not follow PA's deer hunting policies. You will not have any more mature bucks, the quality of the bucks will also go down drastically and your deer population will go from substantial to "Ahhh... we're sure there's still deer out there somewhere." All I can say is that from personal experience I saw far more and bigger bucks when we had 3-4x the doe population we have now.

[Tajue17]

Arrow craft I totally hear where you are coming from but for us in Mass everyone knows its about Money here and have you added up all the doe permits sold and times that by 5 bucks?? this state won't give that up but I must admit I see a lot coming from the Mass Wildlife in these parts as far as new property's to hunt and a lot more access for fishing and whatever.

I know with me, my father and my buddy we all bought 2 doe permits each and my father had no intention of shooting a doe, my buddy never even went hunting and I shot one doe and passed on 7 so here I know there's 5 permits that purposely didn't get used which I hear a lot of people are doing now.

I think the big problem is the deer drives in Mass because you can have as many people as you want and I once counted 28 guys headed in at Myles Standish, Buckshot is legal and does nothing but wounds deer and these guys just decimate the small herds that live in these little sections.

plus the bad winter last year 7 ft total,,, last year behind my house alone I saw a total of 25 deer all season, many at my bird feeder and cutting thru my yard in the spring and summer.

but this season after we got our butts handed to us by old man winter last February I saw a total of 2 deer all season and one I shot early which I wouldn't have if I knew the deer herd was that bad off here.

as far as numbers I'm in Z11 and I can always get two permits but a buddy who hunts in Z8 never got picked for a doe permit and a 2nd friend tried to get a 2nd doe permit in Z10 and they where out,, both guys buy permits but don't shoot ANY does Unless they haven't got deer yet in other states we hunt earlier than Mass but that's unlikely.

put the word out for everyone to buy doe permits and just don't use em ALSO shoot the coyotes you just have to do it,, since we have been killing the coyotes we seen the herd numbers go way up along with more rabbits...... until that wicked 4 blizzards in a row we got last year which  killed a lot of the deer

[Arrowcraft]

Always remember deer hunting never started out as a sport , it was a means to provide sustenance for ones family . I guess I just see too many guys loose sight of that and it becomes a numbers game to brag about . I am a wildlife artist and also part Indian so I guess I look at all wildlife differently.It was put there for us to enjoy and use not to abuse .
--------------68"Black Wolf 57@28
               60" TallTines52#28

[AZ_Longbow]

the game and fish departments should be taking the population densities into account as well as the recourses for the animals to eat. I would hope they are doing more for the herds than just filling the departments pockets. Am I wrong or didn't the decline come from the rapid spread of CWD due to the large number of deer in the area and the lack of food in the last few years of harsh winters?
In AZ we have not had a doe  hunt in over 20years unless it was a jr. only hunt and drawn for.

[Dale in Pa]

Another Pa. guy here who is totally disgusted with the Game Commissions kill all the does policy. I live in eastern Pa. in 5C and for a few years you could buy as many doe licenses as you wanted.

They are slowly lowering allocations, but the damage has been done. It's hard to kill a deer on state game lands, most of the deer move to private property once they get pressured a bit.

Like DSP said above, I saw more and bigger bucks 15 years ago before they started the current management plan.

[Tim Finley]

At one time in my unit in ND I could have gotten as many as 4500 doe permits . We were over populated . Things changed fast, you could see a thousand deer in an evening of scouting to lucky if you see a half dozen now . Over harvest by gun hunters plus several bad winters and suddenly we were short on deer. Now there is not even 4500 gun tags in our unit, buck and doe combined, and many people don't get to hunt unless they are bowhunting . The deer population is just not coming back very fast if at all. Killing momma deer can be over done !!!

[highlow]

Can't wait to see the deer take totals for the past year's seasons. Based on my own experience and hearing from many others about the lack of sightings and the resultant drop in harvests, I'm predicting a sharp downturn. I won't speculate on the reason for this trend but I do know one thing, the large groups of hunters driving deer during gun seasons has to addressed. In the state forest that borders my property, there are some clubs with upwards of thirty members driving deer just about every day of the season. This includes shotgun, doe days and muzzleloader. And, they are very successful, but why not. I would think not too many animals manage to escape that number of guns. The June game council public meeting should be a good one this year.

[Tedd]

We have long grow tired of the biologist "kill all the deer and save the woods" movement. Our north central PA deer herd is way down and has been for a long time. The outrageous number of doe permits has just gone too far. Public land is very difficult to hunt and get a shot with traditional gear. We have huge amounts of public land.  It is easily possible to hunt 6-8-10 day without seeing a deer. Those that say less deer is better because they are bigger are people with access to private land like Granny's back 15 acres near the strip mall. Or uncle John's dairy farm. I'm not looking for a huge rack. I just like to get a chance at a buck once in a while.
You can say what you want and call a hunter lazy or a poor hunter but I don't think you should have to disrupt life and family to the extent required for getting a chance to see a deer in tens of thousands of acres of public land. Another failure of govt./game commission.  I did see  few this year. Got a shot and blew it because I was too cold after hiking up a mountain and trying to stay in the stand all day. It was a better year than I have had in while but I'm not dumb enough to think that the woods is full of deer or the herd increased. I just got lucky.

[Tedd]

Not to hi-jack the thread just BTW the new Kuiu and Sitka kind of clothing has been a great help for bow hunting in mountainous public land. On cold days it allows you to be a little lighter and dryer on the hike in and you can have enough additional light weight clothing in your backpack to stay warm in a tree stand. I'll be getting a few more pcs of it.
Early season pack size isn't too bad.
 

[Tedd]

[fnshtr]

Another factor in WV this year was the legalization of crossbows for hunting. Crossbow hunters were given a season concurrent with our bow season.

I'm concerned that several factors will eventually result in a very reduced herd.

[highlow]

I'd say you definitely hijacked this thread Tedd. About as off topic as one can get.   :confused:

[Cyclic-Rivers]

One spot where I am in NY it takes about 3 years to draw a  doe permit, travel 300 minutes the other way and they give them out non stop.  Where they give them out, there are way more hunters and they say more deer, which I do agree with. But with that being said, Where there are more hunters I do see guys coming in from out of state and a lot more activities like drives going on.  I found 5 deer this year that were shot and unrecovered. The only deer I shot in that area had 2 different arrow wounds.  My buddy took a walk after deer season and found another 4 deer dead from arrow wounds.

I did see one deer who had a  broken leg, probably from a car based on the way it was swinging and talked with a few guys who took 40 + yard shots and couldn't find their deer.

I dont know where I am going with the ramblings but at ouur farm in WI, for about 7 years you could shoot as many deer as you wanted per year.  During those years we saw people coming in on neighboring properties from out of state with the "brown its down" mentality.  we found a  lot of deer dead those years and after about 5 years, you were lucky to see a  deer all season.  Those other hunters eventually became frustrated and moved on.

The deer numbers slowly came back up and there are a whole new group of hunters around with the same mentalities.  

So with increased deer permits or populations you will have increased hunter activity.  I guess the best answer is to have a  responsible population and deer tags to represent that number.  The real question is what is the best number when you take consideration from Hunters, Biologists, farmers, Insurance and anti hunting lobbies?  They will never agree but hopefully find a number that is somewhere in the middle.

[Tedd]

I'm really not sure how enough deer live to keep reproducing. Hunters here feel like its more of a way for modern society to screw over hunters than anything else. They are chipping away to prevent enjoyment hunting at all. One day they will determine deer endangered and try eliminate hunting. In addition to the doe permits we have a lot of predation in the mountains that would keep the herd in check even without doe hunting. (Though I'm not even sure how the predators have enough deer to live on!) With bears being #1, then coyote and even bobcats. There is an ongoing deer study at PSU with live tracked deer being monitored. I can't recall the numbers but I think only 40% of fawns live to see their first hunting season. The PSU team had one adult collared doe that had been killed by a bobcat last winter.

[Tedd]

This is from my trail cam in Tioga County from last spring.
 

[Tedd]

After the findings of first predation study (when prior the game commission said that fawn predation did not occur. They actually increased the number of doe permits. That was 15 yrs ago. Now a second study shows the same percentage of fawns being killed by predators. I'm sure they will be no decrease in doe permits.
 http://ecosystems.psu.edu/research/projects/deer/news/2014/new-fawn-survival-study

 

[Tedd]

This is why I go to Wyoming to hunt each fall. The de4er density is 10 times PA and they still have a limited draw!!
I like to shoot does where herd numbers allow. It's a little hard to understand why hunters would obtain all the permits they can and kill any doe they would see when conditions are like this.  

[Jim Keller]

I'm from PA also. I hardly hunted deer at all this year due to lack of deer. I used to live for bow season and now I've just lost interest. If you don't have private ground to hunt, it's pretty poor hunting. I haven't shot a doe in 21 years and don't plan to for the next 21.
  I agree that upstate I don't think the deer can come back due to predation.
  It's sad how good this state was and what it is today. If there were 2 deer left in the whole state, there would be 50,000 hunters trying to get them both!!