Is a concurrent deer season an opportunity gained or lost?

The last time the Pennsylvania Game Commission board first implemented a 12-day statewide concurrent rifle deer season in 2001, deer reduction was the driver behind the drastic change.

Acting on the belief that deer numbers were too high and creating havoc on the forest, not to mention the burden on agricultural areas, the PGC gave hunters the most effective tool at managing the herd – time.  

Gone was the three-day doe season, replaced by a 12-day rifle season that was open for both antlered and antlerless deer.

Game Commission leaders made it clear back in 2001 that a full concurrent season was all about reducing the statewide deer population.

I dug up this quote from former agency Executive Director Vern Ross: “The 2001 firearms deer season is a historic step for the Game Commission in its efforts to balance the whitetail herd.”

Notice that he used the word “balance.” I’ll get back to that.

So what happened in 2001 when hunters had 12 days to take a buck or a doe?

Not surprisingly, a 486,014 was the result, including 282,767 antlerless deer. The antlerless harvest was actually down that year, but the antlerless license allocation was also reduced in a cautionary move for the first concurrent season.

As the 12-day statewide concurrent season remained in place for several more years, lofty harvests continued. In 2002, more than 517,500 deer were taken, including 352,113 antlerless deer – both of which are records that still stand today.

Are those records ready to fall?

Should they?

It appears the PGC board is laying the groundwork for a potentially high deer harvest for the upcoming 2020-21 season. During the board’s quarterly meeting in January, several measures were passed that are designed to not only give hunters more opportunity to harvest deer, but make it easier to shoot more than one at a time. All of the approvals are preliminary and need to be voted on again in April before they’re enacted.

Among the changes are:

  • Hunters possessing multiple tags may attempt to fill them without first tagging a harvested deer. It’s clear this would make it easier for hunters to shoot multiple deer in a day without the burden of having to climb out of their stand, follow a blood trail and tag an animal. I use the word “burden” in jest.
  • Allowing hunters to purchase up to four DMAP permits per DMAP property. The previous limit was two permits per DMAP property.
  • The biggest change of all is the return of the concurrent buck and doe concept in every Wildlife Management Unit for the entirety of the firearms deer season. Unlike 2001, however, this year’s firearms season is 14 days instead of 12, including the Saturday opener and the addition of the following Sunday. To be clear, what the board has preliminarily approved is to allow hunters to harvest antlered and antlerless deer during a 14-day firearms season that now includes three Saturdays and a Sunday.

Those are some significant changes that, based on past harvests (2001 and 2002), could very well result in a significant reduction in the deer population.

I’m not going to debate if the deer population needs to be reduced or not, but I am troubled that the board approved such broad, potentially impactful changes without even knowing last season’s deer harvest or the current population trends.

Since the deer harvest report typically isn’t released until March, what did the board use as a basis for such sweeping changes this year?

If they used the most recent data available, that would be an annual report on forest health and the deer population that was released on June 28, 2019. It takes into account the 2018-19 harvest and population.

Surely, for the board to approve measures that could drastically increase the harvest, they must have data that indicates the deer population is much too high and the impact on the forest is severe.

The June 2019 report – again, the most recent data available – must back up such a contention, right?

Well, not exactly.

According to the report, the deer impact on forest health was acceptable in 15 of the 23 WMUs (three urban units weren’t considered and five were determined to have a high impact).

I’m not a biologist, but the term “acceptable” tells me there isn’t a problem in most WMUs.

But what about the deer population? Is it too high, as the recently approved changes seem to indicate?

In the 2019 report, post-hunting season deer population trends in three WMUs were increasing. And in the other 20 WMUs, the population was stable.

Remember Ross’s quote about the 2001 concurrent season being a step to “balance” the herd? Where is the balance when a concurrent season is being considered again, yet deer impacts on forest health in most WMUs are acceptable and the population in the majority of the state is stable?

Why, exactly, does the board want to return to a concurrent firearms deer season?

Perhaps they want to give hunters more opportunity. If that’s the case, it’s going to take a significant reduction the antlerless license allocation to avoid an over-harvest of a deer population that, according to an agency report, is stable.

I firmly believe that more time to hunt leads to an increased success rate, which paves the way for a higher harvest.

In a 2001 PGC report issued just before the first concurrent season took place, agency biologists acknowledged that more time afield leads to a higher success rate.

“Expanded opportunities in 2001 for antlerless deer should increase the efficiency of the antlerless licenses.”

That statement confirms the necessity to reduce the antlerless license allocation to accommodate for a concurrent season. If the PGC board follows that guideline, there will be hunters who will be out of luck when it comes to getting a doe license.

To them, the concurrent season may not feel like an opportunity gained, but lost.

  • This story originally appeared in Pennsylvania Outdoor News

One Reply to “Is a concurrent deer season an opportunity gained or lost?”

  1. I do not agree with the concurrent season. When this was done before too many deer were harvested from areas where hunting is allowed. Many state forests and game lands were decimated. The main reason this concurrent season won’t work correctly is because the wmu’s are too big. They need to be much smaller- maybe back to counties or maybe some counties need to be split in half based on deer population and hunting opportunities (state land, land owners that allow others to hunt).

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