You don’t have to travel to remote wilderness areas to find good deer hunting . You may even find a great place near a suburb or park.
Over the years, deer hunters are finding more opportunities to hunt in more residential places that you may not think about, but it’s all part of managing the deer population numbers in the state.
Tom Baric, of Murrysville, considers himself to be an “average Joe” hunter who enjoys archery hunting in the Westmoreland County/Pittsburgh region.
At age 63, he’s been enjoying deer hunting for 51 years. He started archery hunting at age 16.
“I’ve probably killed 80% of my deer with a bow,” the compound bowhunter said. “I love October and the rut,” he said about the early archery season. “It’s the enjoyable time of the year to be out when the weather is beautiful and you got the fall, you can’t beat it,” he said.
When it comes to hunting in developed parts of the state like cities and suburbs, Baric said there are a few key things to keep in mind.
“Certainly the biggest trick is the permission situation,” he said. Hunters should talk to the landowners each year to make sure they are welcome to hunt on the land.
If you do receive permission to hunt, he said it’s always important to show your appreciation to the landowner. He recently dropped off some locally-made pies to a landowner who allows him to hunt. “They were really well received,” he said.
He recommends hunters start asking now for permission to hunt on lands they hunted before to see if anything has changed since last year. For example, one property he used to hunt was leased out to someone and he can no longer hunt there. “Do do the door-knocking,” he said.
When approaching a home, he said it’s good for hunters to be aware of their appearance and to look presentable in casual clothing when asking permission. “I find that if you’re polite, cordial and respectful, surprisingly you get a pretty good response. Nothing ventured, nothing gained,” Baric said.
He also looks for out of the way places to access the woods that have fewer hunters. “The last thing you want is to walk in a set of woods and find a tree stand every 50 yards or 200 hundred yards, plus you don’t want to impede on anyone else,” he said.
He hunts from a self-climbing tree stand that he carries in and out of the woods with his bow. He looks for places that are difficult to access because fewer other hunters may be there.
One of the benefits he said about hunting in urban areas involves the barriers that deer encounter with roads and buildings that funnel deer into certain areas. “They are more predictable,” he said about travel routes.
Keeping deer numbers in check
The Pennsylvania Game Commission manages wildlife through 22 Wildlife Management Unit areas located across the state. “Deer are not evenly distributed across the landscape,” Jeanine Fleegle, wildlife biologist with the deer and elk section of the Game Commission, said.
In towns and cities, the agency offers various tools to help cities manage the population of deer. “Every community is different. Some communities have a higher tolerance for deer,” she said.
Municipalities can ask hunters to apply to participate in an organized hunt on some of their properties like watershed lands and local parks.
The Game Commission provides resources to help guide the officials on what may make sense for their area.
Another option is contacting your municipality, city or local park about hunting. Some of them conduct organized hunts to reduce the deer population.
Hunting helps those in need
Randy Ferguson, executive director of Hunters Sharing the Harvest (HSH) , has been involved in several organized hunts in densely populated areas. Through HSH, hunters donate their deer free of charge and the ground venison is shared with food banks and pantries in the area.
He said there are six or seven community culls or hunts that happen in the Pittsburgh area each fall.
He said the city of Pittsburgh started offering hunts last year in two parks and this year it’s expanded to five parks within the city boundaries. “In those cases, they are requiring hunters to donate their first deer to Hunters Sharing the Harvest. From there, if they harvest more than one, they can take one home for their family, they can continue to donate or whatever they want to do,” Ferguson said.
In some of these situations, the community will help pay the processing fees that HSH has to pay butcher shops for the venison.
“The only way to manage that herd is to harvest them. There really aren’t any other practical ways to deal with that herd,” Ferguson said.
The humane way to manage deer
When it comes to balancing the deer population, there can be two sides to thinking about wild animals.
“You either hate the deer, because they prevent you from growing anything in your yard, or you hit one on the road, they’re a menace. And then there’s the other side who loves the deer and feel that they are one of the reasons they like living in that community and they want them to stay and don’t want any harm to come to them,” Fleegle said.
She said people who are managing the herd don’t want to remove all the deer.
“They would just like a balance, they want a balance between the good things that deer provide their community and the not-so-good things like eating all the landscaping and no park having anything grow below five feet (high), that sort of thing and of course deer-vehicle collisions,” Fleegle said. “So they want to balance the good and the bad.”
The other thing she points out is that hunting is a humane way to control the population.
“When it comes to hunting, deer have one bad day. As opposed to what happens if a deer gets clipped by a car. That deer may not die immediately, it may take weeks for those internal injuries to come to pass to kill that deer. That is terrible, that is inhumane, that is suffering,” she said. “Deer are going to die someway, somehow. Do you want it to be a humane way, which I do believe hunting is humane if it’s done correctly, as opposed to hitting a deer with your vehicle that is a risk to you and your family and causes horrible pain and suffering for that animal?”
If hunters don’t have the opportunity or ability to remove enough deer, there are other programs through the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Wildlife Services that involve hiring sharpshooters and targeted removal. “You pay an entity to come in and remove deer,” she said. “It’s not hunting. It’s not hunting at all.”
The municipality gets a permit and they pay shooters who are able to do things that hunters can’t. She said they have guns with sound suppressors and are able to shoot the deer at night. “They are very efficient and they are exceptionally safe and in some areas, that is really the only way to remove deer safely,” she said.
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Why hunt developed areas?
Baric said hunters are playing an important role in managing the deer population. He said a concerned neighbor approached him about 10 years ago about why he is hunting deer. “She was definitely concerned about the whole concept of hunting because she wasn’t a hunter,” he recalled, adding that she liked seeing her deer.
Now the woman has a different opinion because there are too many deer. “She said please shoot them, they are eating all of my shrubs,” he said. “She realized the benefit of hunting. At first, she was new to the area and didn’t want to see a hunter in the area.”
He said even though he had permission, it was a good educational opportunity to explain to the neighbor why he was there and the benefits of hunting for everyone involved.
“It’s nice if the neighbors aren’t mad at you," he said. "You don’t want to give hunters a bad name.”
Urban deer hunting is convenient for many outdoor enthusiasts. Baric remembers when he was working, he could take a little time over his lunch break to scout a patch of woods.
“One time I found a fresh scrape (made by a buck) that was at least 8-foot long and 4-foot wide. I texted my son that he needed to hunt this buck tonight,” he said. His son got an 11-point there that evening. “It’s the convenience,” he said about finding places to hunt close to home. “Sometimes you’re 100 yards off the road,” he said about good hunting spots.
His favorite reason for hunting close to home is that he’s able to spend more time in the woods, including with his three sons. “Those memories are irreplaceable. They are fantastic, sitting there at daylight watching a young hunter see their first deer walk up to them and then getting their first deer,” he said.
To manage deer numbers in the future, hunters need to remember to introduce new people to the sport. Baric credits his uncle for showing him and his three brothers how to hunt.
“I have three sons now that are hunting as a result of my uncle John, so that’s seven people,” he said. Overall he thinks there are about three dozen hunters who got into the sport because of his uncle. “That’s how it gets passed on,” Baric said about the tradition of deer hunting.
Baric haș mentored several youth and said the satisfaction he received is amazing when a young hunter gets a deer. “Each of those kids has that spark now because I was able to spend some time with them and they are more successful now because they learned. I think seasoned hunters need to look for opportunities to mentor these young guys,” he said.
Brian Whipkey is the outdoors columnist for USA TODAY Network sites in Pennsylvania. Contact him at bwhipkey@gannett.com and sign up for our weekly Go Outdoors PA newsletter email on this website's homepage under your login name. Follow him on Facebook @whipkeyoutdoors .
This article originally appeared on The Daily American: Pa. deer hunters should consider also hunting in some developed areas, too. Here's why
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