|
A mixture of hardwoods, conifers, cultivated crops and abandoned fields comprises ideal Whitetail habitat in many regions of Pennsylvania. However, the effect of one million hunters on just over a million acres of state game land severely limits the maturity of our game animals. Politics and a general misunderstanding of good management policies, further contribute to an abnormal buck-to-doe ratio and a scenario of having to hunt deer that are primarially juveniles. For information and seasons on
hunting and trapping opportunities in Pennsylvania
Some places are special to us. My cabin (later became my home) in the mountains of northern Pennsylvania. was one of those places.
"Genny" acquired scars from encounters with a buck, a bear, feral cats, woodchucks, coons, muskrats, porcupines and a variety of other wildlife plus a mis-guided 4th of July rocket while she "protected" our home in the woods. For over fourteen years she truly was my best friend.
I sold my cabin and most of my land in 1991, but kept a few acres that comprised a textbook "funnel" area for deer traffic. For the last seven years I have hunted out of this campsite in every kind of weather imagineable. Up until two years ago I didn't even have a tent. I simply raked up hemlock needles for a bed and threw a tarp over it then topped it off with my sleeping bag. This year a cabin is finally in the works. I spent some very memorable days at this site and I will certainly miss sleeping under the trees---Yeah Right!
This Potter County, Pa. Buck is a good example of a "decent" sized buck by current Pennsylvania standards. This buck is probably one of the rare two and a half year old bucks that we see and has almost no chance of making it through the upcoming hunting season. If he were to survive another two years he could possibly achieve a B&C score of 150+ instead of the 90-100 inches that he would currently measure.
|
