Hunt lic sales & deer harvest for PA

Over 800,000 general hunting licenses sold every year

Deer harvest (buck & doe) averages over 400,000 per year, over a 10 year average

How many road kills are there, I bet more than the hunter take.....jk

Used to be a million deer hunters in the woods the first day of buck. Now, last estimate I read about 400,000. Camps in the northern woods were swamped with hunters in the old days, at least for the first two days. Last time I was in the northern deer camp maybe 10 percent of the original numbers and most of them are gone after the first day.

Deer camps/hunting are DYING!.
I'm sure licenses could be free and #'s would still decline.
No kid recruitment. Sad.

The youth of any sport is it's future

Lots of todays Pa buck hunters are done in archery season.
Compare these #s to older stats, and a lot less still hunters today
due to counting rack points,
= you can't get there from here.
Like it or lump it, everything changes.
Compare back to depression days for a whole other aspect.

There's a history documentary in this.

I remember elders jumping at the chance to come along just to
cook or process or just be there.
I now see what they saw.

Good luck sitting on stand.

Grew up in PA,1st day of deer season was a holiday. 22 kids in my class, 20 hunted. Hunting club bordering our farm had 50 members and all hunted the 1st full week, and some hunted all 2 weeks. One of the older hunters grandson got a deer a few years ago and wanted to go home at 10:00 am because he "got" his deer. The grandfather said we are here for the week, help other members gut/drag deer or drive. The kid was not happy!

Around here they have over hunted the public land and their isn`t much their to hunt now days.They also don`t select cut the timber anymore on gamelands,seems like they do small clearcuts instead.A lot of the timber around here is wide open hardwoods that you can see 2 or 3 hundred yards in.I hunt all public land and if I was a kid and had to do the same I would find another sport for sure.I do most of my hunting in Ohio now days for deer.They manage the deer much better in Ohio.Only allowed to harvest one doe per year on public land.Our gamecommission is good at manageing money now days.

That's sad. I remember going to deer camp with my dad... it wasn't a big camp, usually not more than 6 hunters but I enjoyed the atmosphere of camp as much or more than the actual hunting. If I wasn't hunting deer, I was hunting grouse or squirrel (often after lunch before the evening hunt) or just rambling through the hills imagining spots to set traps, lol. I couldn't imagine getting a deer and wanting to go home! I hated when it was time to leave.

And the rest are down here.

You can't hardly swing a sika deer without hitting a PA'er!
87% have a GoPro on their head, filming for " their channel".

I know that there are a lot of reasons for lower numbers but I remember a discussion on here about the 99? year lease ran out where a lot of families had a deer camp on and they lost it. I think it was a utilities company that gave the lease. I wonder if that didn't impact the PA hunters and would like to hear from y'all over there about it. It was a very interesting thread.

The 99 year leases I know of around here are on state forest land. I have a couple friends with camps on Tuscarora state forest land with such a lease and haven't heard them say anything about losing it. Could be in some areas tho?

I think that the antler restriction, school influence being negative, welfare giving everything you could possibly want and the computer all contribute to the lack of active young people. They are bored sitting a tree stand, when it was any budy everyone put on drives that was fun, everyone participated even mom and sisters. But not now, to hunt successfully you have to have money, belong to a camp with a lot of land put in feed plots or rent land your self......jk

I'm not sure hippie but I remember a thread quite a few years ago about a big land lease that expired over there. Utilities co or maybe a timber outfit?? People were having to move their belongings and some were tearing down their cabins.

I also remember where some said that after the lease was up the Company or maybe the State limited access in some way. Maybe it was localized and didn't impact the whole State. I just thought it was interesting, we don't have anything like that here.

Antler restrictions was the final nail in our camp as far as us hunting all week like we use to. It wasn't that we can't count, it was a combination of land getting posted because of the doe killing that came with the restrictions on top of hardly anyone killing a Buck.

Easily equal too, Id bet more...... unreal the number of deer killed on highways, and that is only the ones you see. Add into it the number of deer killed illegally, predators... Im surprised deer numbers are what they are.

C22 I think I missed that topic.
Wifes Uncle bought the tail end of a hundo yr lease.
It was through railroad and said to be a dynomite shack.
Great times with family there, hunt, fish, trap, swim, and just well picnic, I guess.
Then got sold to Fam friend and we all still had permission.
Then sold again and we don't dare roll up unanounced.
I proposed to my wife there, it's what us young punks did back then.

One my other base camps was in Forest Co. It was already said how it changed.
To be fair though, there was a time you could barely drive
in low light without smashing into a deer.
That got cured.

Books should be printed on this while some that lived then are still around.
When a 3 point was a trophy for the working man who paid the way.

I agree 100% WB. Although I'm in Ohio, just like in PA and everywhere we are feeling this. There are a ton of reasons for less hunters and less game but some imo are set up by design. We had a hunting gang that would put on drives and we had a ball. But we never had a deer camp like y'all over there and I love hearing the stories about it. If someone wrote a book about it, I'd buy it! Maybe someone will take the Foxfire approach and go around and gather stories, that'd be cool as heck.

I never belonged to a camp however I was always welcome at 1 whose members bought the property off my grandmother in the late 50’s early 60’s, in the 70’s and 80’s growing up I loved being there to the point we often stayed there in hunting season as they were up for the entire 2 weeks and then again in flintlock, as with the members of the camp those days are gone. Trying to keep my daughters interested in hunting whilst not seeing any deer has become a challenge, they both still go some but mostly just to please me I believe. On a real bright note(not) I found three dead deer Saturday and Sunday, two hit by car next to our property and 1 not sure what, all buck.

But we never had a deer camp like y'all over there and I love hearing the stories about it. If someone wrote a book about it, I'd buy it! Maybe someone will take the Foxfire approach and go around and gather stories, that'd be cool as heck.[/quote]


Look into the back issues of PA GAME NEWS. Lots of good stories about camps, etc.
The BEAR CAMP thread on here listed a post with the link. I think it was 'PAGAMENEWSONLINE'

When the deer numbers were high in the northern tier counties, people would come back to camp and say I’ve seen 20, 30, 40 deer. Kids now a days don’t want to come back to camp or home and say they didn’t see a deer all day. Great way to quickly lose interest.

Hunter numbers and youth retention numbers started declining well before antler restrictions. I remember going to camp in the late 70's early 80's and there would be cars lined up all along the roads in the ANF with people camping. By the late 80's early 90's there were hardly anybody camping.

100 yr leases were mainly on state forest land. I've heard of a couple of people losing them for various reasons. Doing things on the land, lease running out, even pipelines coming thru. There are still a lot of them in Elk county.

The ones that really got bit were the ones in the ANF. They just came in and blocked the roads to them, gave the people so long to get their stuff out, and then bulldozed them. There was a road full of them that paralleled Bear creek here in elk. One years they were standing for deer season. The next year for trout season they were gone.

I got my son interested in deer season real young. I have pics of him tracking a deer at 2. Little bugger was real good at tracking deer. We figure it was because he was so low to the ground he didn't have to bend over to look for blood. Even if I got one that dropped 20 yards from the shot site, I would go home and have him come out and look for the deer. He lives for deer season now. My youngest cousin (4 yrs younger than me) had no desire to hunt. As much as his dad tried to get him involved he wanted nothing to do with it. He wasn't against it. Just wanted nothing to do with hunting.

Thanks Elk, that must be the one I remembered. Do you know what happened, why they did that?

What's ANF land?


Allegheny national forest?

anf Allegheny National Forest
ar Antler Restrictions
hr Herd Reduction
bs Blinded by Science

Deers cause a lot of troubles.

The local bar/hotel was packed with hunters. Local people put up hunters for the week. (We had 7 hunters on our farm). The state game lands were loaded with hunters. Fast forward 20 years, poof all gone! Went to PA for early muzzleloader hunting, did not hear a shot or see another hunter.

C-22, No Idea. There one day gone the next. Quite a few of them were pretty run down, So that might've been part of it.

Hippie, ANF = Allegheny National Forest. It is considered the most endangered NF in the country. It's nothing but pipelines and wells. I had a friend who shut down all the wells on a 500 acre section of it accidentally. He was shooting across a valley and hit one of the major power lines running from the station to the wells. Lots of sparks. It took the well guys about 10 hours to get it back up and running. The next year they had orange triangles hanging from all the lines.