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Hunting deer in pandemic; not the same but great

By Ben Moyer for The 5 min read
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“Social-distance” is a phrase we never imagined a year ago but, to deer hunters, it comes naturally. The expression carries a clear negative tone, but there may be no more pleasurable way of separating from other humans than spending a day in the airy open woods looking for deer.

That doesn’t mean the deer season escaped the pandemic’s reach. Thousands who annually gather in cramped hunting camps, closed-up against the cold, will skip this year’s reunion. Others who travel from other states or distant parts of Pennsylvania to hunt with family and friends are disappointed by formal constraints and advisements against travel.

It’s all so ironic. The board of game commissioners set up this year’s season to encourage just the opposite. The season opened Saturday, Nov. 28 and for the first time in modern history Pennsylvania hunters can pursue deer on a Sunday, Nov. 29. The hunting seasons get finalized each April, and game commissioners hoped that a full opening weekend this year would boost excitement and wider participation than ever before. They could not have foreseen this anticlimax.

It’s a letdown that hits home. My son lives in North Carolina. He and I look forward to hunting together a day or two each year, but it won’t happen because we made the mutual decision to delay that communion, hopefully, until 2021. A close friend from Harrisburg has traveled west to hunt with us nearly every season since 1984, but that’s nixed too. Over years, we’d crafted deer hunting into a partly social event, with a camp cookout and after-hours relaxation around a campfire. A consolation is that others have already made greater sacrifices in this pandemic, and millions more in other crises down through history. We can survive a disrupted deer season for the common good.

Still, if you can hunt near home without close contact with people outside your normal circle, the best rewards of deer-hunting remain unchanged, as they have for thousands of years. Alone in the quiet woods, the sight of an approaching deer will be as exciting as ever. A well-placed shot, or a questionable chance passed by through ethical choice, will be just as satisfying as last season. Deer hunting is one of those rare things at its simple best when untampered with. Deer hunting’s payoffs, like most interactions with nature, are constants.

We live in a good place to enjoy those benefits. Southwestern Pennsylvania has prime habitat for white-tailed deer, much public land, and a strong hunting tradition. Hunters here make the most of it. In 2019 hunters tagged an estimated 9,400 antlered bucks and over 14,000 antlerless deer in Wildlife Management Unit (WMU) 2C, embracing Fayette County’s mountainous half east of Route 119. In the local lowlands, hunters last year killed 6,900 bucks and 9,900 antlerless whitetails in WMU 2A, including Fayette County west of Route 119, all of Greene County and most of southern Washington.

This season the distinction between antlered and antlerless deer (“bucks and does”) is more important than a hunter’s preference for a rack of “horns.” It’s a legal matter. In WMU 2C, both antlered and antlerless deer will be legal game throughout the season, Nov. 28-Dec. 12, including Sunday, Nov. 29, provided a hunter holds a valid antlerless license. But in WMU 2A, the season is “bucks only” until Dec. 5. There, antlerless deer may be taken only during the season’s second week.

The Game Commission authorized the two-week concurrent “buck and doe” season in WMU 2C because chronic wasting disease has been confirmed in a few deer in the far eastern reaches of the unit, east of Somerset. The Game Commission views this wider opportunity to reduce deer densities by taking does throughout the season as an aid in slowing disease spread. Chronic wasting disease has never been detected in WMU 2A.

After Nov. 29, no more hunting is permitted on Sundays during 2020-21.

Any deer taken legally and ethically is a prize, but more large-racked bucks are showing up in Pennsylvania since antler restrictions were instituted in 2002, protecting most young bucks from harvest until their second year when antlers typically grow wider, with more points.

In WMU 2A, a buck must have three tines on the main beam (not counting the brow tine) of one antler to be legal. In WMU 2C the brow tine may be counted, so any buck with a total of three tines on one antler is legal.

“If you haven’t hunted whitetails in some time, now’s the time to get back into it,” said Game Commission executive director Bryan Burhans. “The size and quality of bucks right now probably hasn’t been duplicated in the Commonwealth in over 150 years. You won’t believe what’s running around in Penn’s Woods.”

Executive Director Burhans emphasizes the importance of successful deer hunters reporting their kill to the Game Commission. Hunters’ reports are the best way for Game Commission biologists to determine workable estimates of the harvest and deer population size in various units. But unfortunately, and tough to explain, only about a third of hunter-killed deer get reported.

“Estimates are key to managing deer populations and hunters are asked to do their part in this important process,” he noted. Successful hunters can report their deer kills by mail, using the postage-paid card supplied with a hunting license, online at www.pgc.pa.gov by clicking on “Report a Harvest,” or by calling 1-855-PAHUNT1 (1-855-724-8681).

In some ways, deer season 2020 won’t be the same. But by other measures that attempt to explain why people still hunt in our modern tech-driven world, it will be as great as ever.

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