Lugnut I disagree with you n this " state has 1.5 million acres of public State Game Lands managed by the Game Commission that are dedicated to hunting and trapping." I think it is managed for timber. If it was for deer they would have much more timber harvesting. A lot of the land is mature forest with no yearly mast crop. Just my opinion.....jk

While I agree that they don't do enough timber harvesting (25,000 acres harvested plus 11,000 acres of prescribed burns during the 2024-25 fiscal year) that is only a small part of their land management. There are tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of acres managed for small game where alternating rows of crop fields and cover exist. This is a big benefit to deer too. Game lands are not just forests.

There were two bucks in the yard yesterday,
one had a soft ball size thing hanging.
Was a time those got culled.
Now they are future trophies on camera.

In PA you can only harvest one buck and it has to have three points on one side, or four point in the western counties near Ohio.

Non residents can get six doe tags from the PA Game Commission, more with the Deer Management Assistance Program (DMAP) program which helps private landowners manage the deer population by handing out coupons to hunters to kill doe.

The state has 1.5 million acres of public State Game Lands managed by the Game Commission that are dedicated to hunting and trapping.

There are and additional 2.2 million acres of State Forest and 300,000 acres of State Park land open to public hunting and trapping.

That's minimum of nearly 4 million acres of public land.

PA has a lot of hunters but also a pretty healthy deer population.

I kill most of my deer in the late season. By then most guys have either filled their tags or got the craps of it. The deer are no longer pressured and I am pretty much guaranteed to see some coming out of cover and heading for a snack before dark if I sit out an evening or two.

I remember many years ago when there were some guys from our area who took orders from people in MN for deer. They were going to SD where, with the proper licenses you could shoot 3 or 4 does per person. I don't know how many they got.
My dad was crippled up at the time and couldn't get out hunting. They gave him one. I helped him cut it up.