Questions about WMU 3D......

[cutngut85]

I am in the process of closing on some property in wmu 3D. I tried to figure out my questions on the PGC website but some things are still unclear so I figured I'd post here.
1. Are there apr's in 3D?
2. You can only harvest one buck per year, not one per season?
3. Are rifles permitted in 3d?
4. What distance is needed between your stand and nearest house?
5. Does the state use a call in system for deer, bear and turkey or stations?
6. Most importantly......how is the hunting in 3d compared to PA in general?

Thanks in advance for your responses. I will most likely not get a chance to hunt PA this year but plan to spend a lot of time on the property next year!

[Everyday Hunter]

ORIGINAL: cutngut85

I am in the process of closing on some property in wmu 3D. I tried to figure out my questions on the PGC website but some things are still unclear so I figured I'd post here.
1. Are there apr's in 3D?
2. You can only harvest one buck per year, not one per season?
3. Are rifles permitted in 3d?
4. What distance is needed between your stand and nearest house?
5. Does the state use a call in system for deer, bear and turkey or stations?
6. Most importantly......how is the hunting in 3d compared to PA in general?

Thanks in advance for your responses. I will most likely not get a chance to hunt PA this year but plan to spend a lot of time on the property next year!

Congratulations on buying land.

1. All WMUs in Pennsylvania have APR. In 3D, a buck is required to have 3-points on at least one side. (Pennsylvania Hunting & Trapping Digest, page 53)
2. You can harvest only one buck per license year, which runs from July 1 to June 30. That means if you harvest a buck in archery season, you are finished hunting bucks. (However, depending on when you harvest your buck, you may be able to take two in one calendar year. For example, if you harvest a buck during January in the late flintlock or archery season, you can take another buck that same year after buying the next year's license.)
3. Yes, you can use a rifle in 3D during the regular firearms deer season, this year running from Nov. 29-Dec. 11. (Digest, page 11.)
4. The safety zone for firearms hunters is 150 yards from an occupied dwelling (for a definition of an occupied dwelling, see page 16 of the Digest), and for archery hunters is 50 yards. However, as I read the regulations, you would be permitted to discharge a firearm or arrow within those limits with the permission of the occupants.
5. No, the state does not use a call-in system. For deer and turkeys, you can either mail in a card supplied with your license, or report online. For bears, you must report to the check station with your bear within 24 hours.
6. I don't know what the hunting is like in that area. Maybe someone else will report on that. However, there are magazines on the news stands that might help answer this question.

Good luck.

Steve

[cutngut85]

Thanks for the quick reply Steve!
I hunt central and western Jersey and my parents' have had a place in the Poconos for 25 years.....did a lot of scouting and some hunting around that area but was never able to spend any quality time there. We had this opportunity to purchase the land practically fall on our lap and we couldn't pass it up. The backyard backs to 10,000+ acres of state land and I saw a lot of good deer signs on the day we looked at the piece. I knew the hard copy of the digest would be easier to navigate through but haven't had the time to pick one up. Thanks again for the reply.

[DaveYak]

[font=arial]I grew up hunting in 3D, it can be great and really bad at the same time.  If you are near the Shohola area there is a ton of state game lands, and a lot of deer, however it is hunted very heavily!  If you are down by the Delaware River there are a ton of deer but hunter very, very heavily on the public land.  If your property is big enough to hold deer I would stay on that.  Deer hunting, I have hunted mostly private land and have had a lot of success.  Turkey hunting, I have had equal success there are turkeys everywhere but a lot of dumb people can make a turkey very smart!  If you want to, let me know where you are hunting and I will be able to give you a little more detailed info.  Don't worry, I won't steal your spot, I hunt in Susquehanna County now days, if I do hunt Pike County I have several hundred acres of private land I am allowed to hunt.[;)][/font]
[font=arial][/font] 
[font=arial]DaveYak[/font]

[locknload]

old question but worth reviving, WMU 3D in Pa. is a tough spot for hunters who must hunt public lands, i.e. state parks and gamelands- those areas are very heavily hunted, with relatively sparse game populations to begin with. Long gone are the 20-30 deer herds, or even 10 deer herds, a big herd is 5-6 deer now. I've lived in 3D for 50 years, and my family has lived here for over 100 years. It used to be you saw deer every time you went hunting up until about 1980. Now almost ALL the private land is posted, and you have a 95% chance of NOT seeing any deer when hunting. Almost NO ONE gives permission to hunt on their land, except to family, with few exceptions. If you have permission from someone already, consider yourself very lucky. Hunting in 3D has become a sport for landowners, not the average hunter who lives in a house on a 1/2 acre lot somewhere. When I was a kid you could hunt everywhere and anywhere, the farmers and landowners used to wave at us as we hunted their fields and woods. Not anymore. Much of it has been developed for housing tracts, what was not developed is posted by a new generation of landowners. If it's not posted, you can legally go in, but I'd expect to get kicked out, or find a nasty note on my vehicle when leaving that says "don't come back again", i.e. it happened to me twice. This on plots of land with no homes nearby, no obvious owners nearby, not posted, but somehow they'll find out, or have someone watching the property, and issue you a warning note on your car windshield. Much of the land is owned by out of state people who don't even live here, bought during the housing boom on speculation to develop it- (that has now crashed dramatically, but is another story). The area has become a suburb of NYC, Philadelphia, NJ urban areas.

If you own some acreage, you're in and will enjoy some very good hunting, provided there's not too many hunters on it for the acreage size, otherwise it becomes a 2 day season, i.e. after the 2nd day of rifle season, the deer realize what's up, and move on- and the rest of the 2 week rifle season becomes a waste of time sitting in your stand, staring at the trees. Let too many hunt and it goes south quickly due to hunting pressure. Lots of deer go nocturnal here. You'll hear a big buck snorting around your stand at 6:00 AM when you can't a thing, and he'll vanish by 6:30 AM when it's light enough to have seen him.

the deer are really spooky because of the hunting pressure. The trend now is towards very high hand built wooden stands, 2x higher than what you would buy at Cabela's or Dick's in a ladder stand, these are home made with wooden walls all around, and roofs, so the deer can't see the hunter at all- visually it's a box in the trees, The ladder stands with platforms 12' to 15' high don't do so well anymore, like a worn out coyote call that scares coyotes away, my gut tells me the deer have learned to look up at them, and see a hunter in the platform ? Sounds crazy but that's what I've noticed and experienced. The hand built wooden stands are 25-30 feet high, sometimes 35 feet high, and those hunters do quite well. It's the only way to get the scent high enough, and be concealed enough, so the deer doesn't know you're there. Now the kicker, I've seen hunters with similar height exposed steel platform stands with added ladder lengths, with no sides, still get skunked. Just my observations the past 5 years.

the 6 week long early bow/muzzleloader season, and mentors/youth hunts, have taken a heavy toll of the deer population- now the goal is to "tag out" during bow season, i.e shoot a buck and a doe, before the regular rifle season even starts. Then don't even hunt the rifle season at all. It's becoming a warm weather deer season. This is not a good thing. A rifle-only hunter doesn't get in the woods until Monday after Thanksgiving holiday, and by then half or more of the big deer are taken already by bow, and a lot of guys are now using scoped crossbows. We are also finding quite a few deer the past few years, that died and rotted in the woods, because they were hit with crossbows, and the hunter didn't bother to track them. See what's happening ? Rifle hunters that were accustomed to stopping them in their tracks with a 30-06, lack the tracking skills to find a deer wounded by a bow, that runs a few hundred yards or more- instead of just 100 feet.

they need to cut back the doe season, and shorten the bow season. The 6 week bow/muzzleloader season was too much of a good thing.

I firmly believe the PGC is in cahoots with the auto insurance companies, and was lobbied to cut back the deer population, so the insurance companies saved millions $$$ by not having to repair so many deer hits on vehicles. Why else would they have a virtual blitz on the deer population, to the point where it's very sparsely populated with game- and you pay $30 for a license, and never see a deer. At this rate we'll have to hunt them by plane or helicopter just to see one, or buy your own 200 acre game preserve.

One last point, the few guys I know who do own land, 50 to 200 acre plots, shoot a lot of small doe and young buck, not trophy buck. The PGC is giving out doe tags like candy, they obviously want the deer population nearly extinct. I got 2 doe tags this year without hardly trying, but may refrain from filling them- and I know others who have gotten 3 tags. It used to be difficult to get just one doe tag, years ago when I started hunting.

[ishman]

It always seems that people want to bash archery hunters because during gun season they find dead deer that were hit with an arrow. But there are far more deer wounded or not found from gun season than archery. Archers just always seem to get a bad rap for it because gun hunters find them. Take a long walk a week or so after gun season and see how many you find. How do we know that people who wound a deer in archery season arent out there trying to find there deer? If they arent looking then they obviously wouldnt be looking for a deer that they assume they miss with a gun because it didnt fall over right in front of them. If that is how these people are then they dont deserve to be in the woods at all. You have to respect the animal you are hunting.

The long archery season and youth and senior hunts dont have any extra affect on the deer population. Whats the difference if I shoot a deer in october as opposed to late november? If anything shooting does earlier in the year makes for a better and more intense rut. It is also more food for the deer that dont get shot early. Both are better for the health of the deer population. Which was also the reason for thinning out the herd. The woods were polluted with small bucks and unhealthy deer. The woods were overbrowsed and it was affecting the population. Now i agree that some places it probly went a bit overboard but thats going to happen. I honestly dont believe insurance companies had anything to do with it. That just doesnt make sense.

[Deebz]

I agree with ishman (not that I have any idea about the deer herd in PA), but when your population is too high your whole ecosystem goes to pot... Not having enough food for the deer causes them to not be able to reach their full potential... which means the bucks that could be monsters just don't get enough nutrition to sport the headgear they p are capable of.

Shooting does early in the year is also a great management tool to improve the herd, as well as rut/post rut buck activity.

However, I also agree that the big time auto lobbyist are definitely pushing for more liberal seasons nation wide... I don't have the figures in front of me, but I did some research for a paper in college concerning the cost in dollars as well as human lives due to deer vehicle accidents, and it is flat out ridiculous. The insurance companies most definitely are going to lobby as much as they can to get the deer herd thinned down... My dad is convinced that a lot of the hype concerning CWD is being fueled them as well.

His argument is that in the area he's hunted for his entire life, the deer herd has remained healthy and stable... After 1 deer in the county turned up positive for CWD, they brought in sharpshooters after the late season and killed 100 deer 2 years ago and something like 65 last year... The deer sightings are WAY down compared to what he's used to seeing.

I'm not saying I agree with him, but it is food for thought...

[xmatax]

While I don't hunt 3D in PA, I do hunt 1B.

I would have to say a lot of the observations previously described are common throughout the state. I have been hunting for almost 20 years now and when I first started you would see deer every single day in the stand and not only deer, but lots of them. To date, my largest "herd" of deer on the property I hunt was in '94 when I saw a group of about 20 the last day of doe season. However, that was a time when you were almost gauranteed a "bonus" doe tag. Since then it seems like the "herds" on the property we hunt have gone from double digits down to single digits with the M.O. being around 3 - 5.

I can't say for one reason or another why the population and sightings dropped, whether it was the insurance companies (we did have the highest deer related auto accidents at one time), the over-issuing of licneses, less habitat due to housing communities being strung up throughout the countryside, or even more hunters, but one thing is a certain, it does seem like deer sightings have been down within the past 10 years.

One of the things to note however is, at least in my area, there are certain areas or properties that seem to produce year after year and there are some areas that, while they have deer, just don't seem to hold any real "monsters". If you are fortunate enough to get one of those properties, no matter how small a tract of land you will be taking quality deer year after year. If you have a tract of land that doesn't seem to hold those type of buck, then chances are you're going to be harvesting a lot of doe year in and year out.

I know amongst my family a lot of debate has been put into whether it's better to see more deer or see less dear but they are healthier and bigger deer. I guess that's a discussion for another day though.