Giving Dr. Gary Alt credit for the recent improvements in Pa. deer management is like giving Obama credit for jobs created because Trump reversed many of his anti-business policies.
No doubt bigger racks are more plentiful. You'll have that when you institute antler restrictions. The genetics for big racks were always there. But we still protect genetically inferior spikes which is insanity under QDM guidelines. The deer numbers have rebounded somewhat from the precipitous drops which occurred under Gary Alt's mismanagement, and ridiculous numbers of doe tags that were being issued. Thankfully, that trend had been somewhat reversed ever since he was driven out of the state under threats of death from irate hunters. Other things that helped those who are dedicated to putting in the work to get their deer are the sheer numbers of hunters who quit in disgust, and the vast amount of private land that became posted because landowners wanted to save some deer from extermination and extinction. I can vividly recall many days of covering several miles a day in fresh snow without crossing a single deer track at the same time Gary Alt and Co. were trying to tell us the population of deer was still over their target goal of 16.1 deer per forested square mile. This scenario was repeated in many different areas of several different counties in the Northwest and North Central regions.
It was a lot like they did with the pheasants in Pa.. Getting rid of Gary Alt was a step in the right direction, and it's a shame we can't muster the same sort of seething anger and discontent to reverse the mismanagement of small game populations.
