Pennsylvania Game News - September 2020 - 4

FIREARMS SEASON BY WMU
More of Pennsylvania's Wildlife
Management Units (WMUs) - 10 of them
- will have concurrent hunting of antlered
and antlerless deer for the duration of the
firearms deer season in 2020. They are:
WMUs 2B, 2C, 2D, 2E, 4A, 4B, 4D, 5A, 5C
and 5D.
These WMUs represent a combination
of developed WMUs where the concurrent
firearms season has existed for decades -
WMUs 2B, 5C and 5D - and those WMUs
where CWD has been detected in free-ranging
deer.
Within the state's other 13 WMUs, a splitseason in which only antlered deer may be
harvested from Saturday, Nov. 28 through
Friday, Dec. 4, followed by the concurrent
antlered-antlerless season from Saturday,
Dec. 5 through the season's last day on Dec.
12, remains in place.
Hunters with valid DMAP permits can use
them on the properties for which they're
issued at any time during the firearms season.

shows the seasonal slip and rebound:
2017-18, 163,750 bucks; 2018-19,
147,750; and 2019-20, 163,240. The same
recovery can be seen in the archery buck
harvest: 2017-18, 62,830 bucks; 2018-19,
54,350; and 2019-20, 74,190.
The 2019-20 buck harvest pulled the
numbers back to the pace they'd been
keeping. Before the 2018-19 drop, the
buck harvest had increased for four consecutive years.
What's notable, said Game Commission deer biologist Bret Wallingford, is the
2019-20 archery buck harvest accounted
for 45 percent of the state's overall buck
harvest. In 2018-19, archers took 36 percent of the buck harvest; in 2017-18, it
was 38 percent. Of course, as the archery
ranks grow, more hunters figure to take
their bucks in bow season.
"Archery tackle, especially crossbows,
and longer seasons have made bowhunting more attractive to more hunters," Wall4

ingford said. "The bigger bow harvests
reflect this."
But the shift influences firearmsseason participation, as well.
"The management effect for this is that
WMUs with split firearms seasons have
no or limited opportunities for hunters
who took a buck with a bow, and consequently there's less hunting pressure on
opening days," Wallingford said.
Only time will tell whether this change
up will continue, but there's no denying
the attractiveness of crossbows to veteran
hunters who can no longer draw a compound bow and want to hunt in warmer
weather. That the archery deer season now
runs a week deeper into the rut makes it a
slam dunk for most.
Pennsylvania is not the only state
where bowhunters are taking more and
more of the overall buck harvest across all
seasons. In 2018, New Jersey bowhunters
took 57 percent of the state's buck harvest,
followed by Connecticut, 47 percent; and
Ohio, 46 percent, according to the Quality
Deer Management Association's 2020
Whitetail Report.
Nationally, though, bowhunters
account for only 23 percent of the whitetail harvest, according to QDMA.
With this firearms season's SaturdaySunday opening weekend, and an extra
week of bowhunting, who knows, maybe
hunters can surpass the largest buck harvest in the antler-restrictions era, when
165,416 bucks were taken in the first year,
2002. They've been knocking on the door
two of the last three years.
"Pennsylvania deer hunters are experiencing buck harvest success levels - even
with antler restrictions - that are comparable to the historic highs in the late 1990s
and early 2000s," noted Christopher
Rosenberry, agency Game Management
Division chief. "For the past few years,
Pennsylvania Game News - September 2020

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