[renegade]

Yep good point. Your just like them, it's about you, you, you. Except they stayed... you ran.

[buckman]

Don't let sly ole Ghost/Mountaineer fool ya', he's keepin a close eye on things in Pa. If he weren't he wouldn't have tried hunting here again.

[buckman]

Mountaineer is right about this in the sense that more trophy size bucks are killed in Ohio than Pa.

Where we disagree is that Pa has improved from what it once was in producing larger bucks.

As the record books show for my first statement they also show for the second one.

In comparing ANY state with Pa one must include many factors to quantify the comparison. For simple example: nutritional value of available food, number of hunters and hunter attitudes.

Pa is capable of producing quality bucks but a lack of nutrition will adversly effect mature bucks from reaching antler inches comparable to midwest states in many areas.

Hunter numbers are higher in Pa and the pressure on bucks doesn't allow a higher number of them to get old enough to produce large racks. We would need to flood the deer population with a higher proportion of older bucks for more of them reach trophy status and this is difficult with the amount of pressure on them.

Finally, hunter attitudes appear somewhat different in midwest states in that a higher percentage of a smaller number of hunters will pass on younger bucks. A majority of Pa hunters don't recognize the full potential of how big a rack a mature buck can produce even in the worst of habitat areas. Generally speaking, hunters here are happy with legal sized bucks and if they kill something bigger (even 2.5 yr. old) it's a gift that they think is an oddity. Rather than passing on this same buck(like midwest) to "flood" the population with older bucks.

Prime example of this: my dad's biggest buck is a 7pt. that score's less than 100". He visited recently and seeing my step-sons mounted 100" eight point from 2009 he asked if the buck I saw with my boy the first day (2010) was bigger. I said "heck yea by quite a bit", he just stared at me like I was from outer space. He hasn't seen many truly big bucks to say the least and just think, he was looking at a nice 2.5 yr. old buck not a mature one!! To my dad and many Pa hunters something bigger is mostly a pipedream when in reality it's very possible today.

For Pa to come close to comparing with midwest states, AR standards would need to be more restrictive and force hunters to allow more 2.5 yr. olds to reach 3.5 OR have a buck tag draw system which would limit the number of bucks taken in each unit.