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Potential Pa Record Typical

Awesome deer. Shot in the only county in western PA to have any deer and/or trophy potential. PA deer numbers are in the tank with the exception of Allegheny county, home to Pittsburgh. The hunting is in lightly hunted urban areas near the city or airport where the deer are largely left alone. Congrats to the hunter.
 
Wow... Are your lives really that boring??? I understand it's out of respect to the animal but come on guys ... This is the reason people no longer post harvest photos...
 
Great buck. What's incredible is that the buck there could be a state record?!?!? WHOA, I mean, it's a really good buck but that's a darn shame the quality of bucks in PA & how few must reach maturity. I mean, that buck is pretty "common in Iowa" - like you'd see a dozen like that each year at the classic & find bucks shot like that in many counties in Iowa with consistency. Dang nice but that's crazy it's a state record. Poor folks stuck in PA.
 
Sligh, you are exactly right. Unfortunately in PA the pressure and mismanagement by PA's Game Commission and accommodating hunters have decimated the deer herd. This year a mere 750,000 hunters took to the field, down from 1,000,000 several years ago. This type of pressure coupled with very liberal doe allocations over the past 15 years have destroyed the herd. This year I did participate in PA's first day of gun season only to not see a single deer, a first for me in 36 years of deer hunting. I'm not alone. I've heard the same from many PA hunters. This is the path Iowa is on if hunters do not take a stand with liberal seasons and the intro of new seasons and weapons. As you have said many times the future is up to educated hunters, not agencies or politicians.
 
I watched the "live streaming" event of the measuring today. http://www.livestream.com/pagamecommission

First, I gotta say a huge congrats to that hunter! He didn't appear to get too upset when the score came back way under what they thought it would (ended up tied for 13th in the state). Great buck and kudos for not being dissappointed.

Second, I cringed when the measurer began to explain his score and why it didn't score as well as they thought, I always hated that feeling.

I quit scoring officially 5 years ago because of this. I got tired of trying to "cheer" the hunter up after I was done. I could always see the disappointment in their eyes, so I had to give them the "thats a once-in-a-lifetime" deer pep talk to try to get them to realize the score isn't everything. After that, the individual measurement questioning begins, the math analyzation, and then compairing the official scorer's measurements to their own. I've had a few people yell at me and many question my knowledge.

Needless to say, after many years of doing it, I started to doubt the hunters' true inspiration for hunting, it seemed as though a high percentage of them were only interested in the score. I called B&C and told them I was done and the reasons why. I haven't scored more than 5 deer since.
 
Doesn't Pennsylvania have a county or two where it is archery only?

I know in the metro up here in MN some very nice bucks are shot in archery only areas.
 
My first impression was it wouldn't make 180 and certainly not over 190 like some speculated by taking ruff measurements. I almost pursued becoming an official scorer but like adamo states, some hunters only worry about the highest score than can squeeze out of it rather than respect the trophy for what it is. Still a great archery buck for any state!
 
Sligh1 said:
Great buck. What's incredible is that the buck there could be a state record?!?!? WHOA, I mean, it's a really good buck but that's a darn shame the quality of bucks in PA & how few must reach maturity. I mean, that buck is pretty "common in Iowa" - like you'd see a dozen like that each year at the classic & find bucks shot like that in many counties in Iowa with consistency. Dang nice but that's crazy it's a state record. Poor folks stuck in PA.
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It's not about how few reach maturity there. Midwest people seem to not realize that the deer there are just much much larger than other places for various reasons.

Here in TN our typical record is 186. There are probably several of those killed in Iowa every year. We have just as many mature bucks in our state.. just not the soil quality and habitat.
 
although I am apprehensive to give a ballpark score from photos, when pictures of this buck first surfaced, I was unable to get anywhere near the advertised score. Many are not educated to the ENTIRE scoring system. I recently had a conversation with a fellow who worked at one of the larger archery shops in central PA that has a yearly buck contest that a few hundred people enter. For 8 years he scored every buck entered. Come to find that he would take H1 measurements at base on top of the burr, not smallest circ between burr and G1. Can you imagine the desparities?
 
Hardwood11 said:
Doesn't Pennsylvania have a county or two where it is archery only?

I know in the metro up here in MN some very nice bucks are shot in archery only areas.
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In Pa some of the counties in the metro areas are shotgun and archery only. Some of the townships or municipalities within those counties are archery only or have a no discharge ordinance. As far as the negative comments on the Pa Game Commission, in the areas with low deer numbers the problem is much deeper than Game Commission policies. In the 513,000 acre Allegheny National Forest for example, the lack of timber harvest has contributed to a huge decline in quality habitat within that area. In the privately owned areas that are actively harvesting timber deer numbers are still good. With around a million licensed hunters leading to overcrowding in the public game land areas and declining habitat in the vast national forest result in a diminished deer herd in those areas specifically. A buck living past three years in Pa is very rare which is why the record book deer are not that impressive compared to Iowa. With all those things considered...that is one impressive animal and one lucky hunter.
 
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