2005 Deerless Rifle Season

4 Comments on “2005 Deerless Rifle Season”

1. Same story here; I saw one deer, a half rack 2 point Monday, none thereafter. No shots fired in our camp. For certain, the PGC will hear numerous complaints again this year, but they have a deaf ear. This agency is in deep trouble, with expenses accelerating rapidly, and license sales predictibly down again next year. When will they learn???? The root cause is political pressure from special interest groups including the PA Forest Growers and DCNR. At another camp a hunter tried to convince me the insurance companies are behind the herd reduction. This is not true – auto insurers could care less. Why? Because they price comprehensive coverage accordingly, and will never lose money. Nope, it is Rendell a non-hunter)and his cronies behind the problem.

2. Hunting in central Perry County:

   Monday- 16+ anterless deer sighted. I could have had shots at most. One hunter in our camp shot a 5 point and saw several does. Another hunter in our camp sighted 3 bucks and a number of does, 2 of which were shootable bucks but did not get shots. Another hunter shot a young doe and saw a 3pt buck. The last hunter saw 10 does and 1 small buck. There was very little shooting overall.

   Tuesday- I hunted in the rain on Tuesday and did not see a deer all day until I killed a large doe at 4:00 pm. My dad sighted a group of 7 doe in the morning. We only heard about 6 different shots during the day.

3. I saw 28 doe in Crawford County (WMU 1B) which is 28 more than I saw last year. Granted I was
   hunting on a DMAP property so I knew there were deer there. I filled both of my doe tags by 10:30.
   It was a humbling experience but I cannot believe I didn’t see any horns.

4. 2005 PA deer season – location in north central PA in the Tiadaghton State Forest. Our camp,
   plus 4 other camps, totaling over 25 hunters in the 5 camps, hunted for the first 4 days of
   buck season. At the end of the fourth day, Thursday, we saw a total of 6 deer – yes, 6 deer –
   5 doe and one button buck!!!! We hunt on top of 3 different mountains and to everyone’s
   knowledge, not 1 buck was taken off any of the 3 mountains. That is very poor. As some of
   the older hunters (35+ years of experience on those mountains) stated that this was the worst
   season in their collective memories.
   This seems to be the same story as members from the 5 mentioned camps talk with hunters from
   other parts of PA. A friend, who hunts in the county above our cabin, usually has a cabin success
   rate of 40+% this year took zero deer. The cabin has 12 to 15 members who hunt anywhere from
   2 days through the entire first week. At the end of the week, only a few doe had been seen
   and these same small groups of doe probably had been observed by several different hunters,
   thus affecting/inflating the count. No bucks were seen the entire week.
   What is alarming is that both areas mentioned above saw NO young deer during the first week.
   In the past, we often saw large numbers of yearlings or deer born during the past spring. What
   we all have witnessed is a very large increase in the coyote population. Almost everyone saw
   at least one coyote!!!