Pennsylvania Has the Best (and Oddest) Deer Hunting Culture in America

Pennsylvania deer hunters are different. I can say that because I am one. Born and raised. Never lived anywhere else, and never missed a deer season since 1990.

Why are we different?

This is where schools and businesses shut down when the gun season opener was, for decades, on the Monday after Thanksgiving. This is where hunters for generations were taught to shoot spike bucks and forkies because, “if you don’t shoot it, the next hunter will.”

This is where, when a Game Commission biologist in 2002 toured the state to discuss his plans to shoot lots of does and protect spikes and forkies in the name of balancing the deer herd, he had to wear a bullet-proof vest and needed an armed escort because of threats to his life.

This is where the mountainous, northern half of the state has more deer camps than permanent residences, and those camps stay in families for generation after generation.

This is where director Michael Cimino in 1978 set the Oscar-winning, Vietnam-era film The Deer Hunter, whose main character – played by Robert De Niro – was fanatical about chasing deer. The director insisted that the main character live in a Pennsylvania steel town.

Deer hunting is religion here. And the traditions associated with it are sacred.

Becoming a PA Deer Hunter

This is the Pennsylvania I was raised in through the 1970s and 80s. I was not born into a deer-hunting family — Dad didn’t hunt and Mom didn’t want guns in the house — but I wanted to be a deer hunter in the worst way.

I had friends from school who hunted deer. I saw deer hunters on the farms around home during the fall. I collected shotgun shells and spent brass from the woods behind my house. And the one bright spot about my annual trip to the dreaded dentist’s office was that he had stacks of Outdoor Life magazines that I would ravenously read before being led to the torture chamber.

I even told classmates that I hunted deer. Lying about it was the closest I could get to living out my deer hunting fantasy. Every time I went to confession at St. Agnes Catholic Church, I told the priest that I had lied. He told me to stop it and to say three Hail Marys as penance. I did, but then I’d go on lying about being a deer hunter again.

It wasn’t until I graduated from college in 1990 that I finally got my Pennsylvania hunting license. To say I was excited when the 1990 firearms deer season rolled around would be like saying Kyle Schwarber is making a good living under his current contract with the Phillies.

I was invited to go to my then future brother-in-law’s family camp in the famous northern tier of Pennsylvania. I was given a loaner .30/30 Winchester that I shot for the first time two days before the opener. In the pitch dark of opening morning, I was led to the base of a tree somewhere in the 146,000-acre Tiadaghton State Forest. Then I was left in the woods, on my own.

This was 1990. Spikes and forkies were considered trophies that should not be passed up. The walls of the cabin where I was hunting were loaded with such bucks. The biggest rack was about a 14-inch-wide 8-point with 8-inch tines. That was huge compared to everything else on the wall, and the guy who shot it was the big man in camp.

So you can imagine my surprise when, about an hour after daylight on my first-ever Pennsylvania gun season opener, I spotted an 8-pointer, about the size of the one back at camp. The buck was feeding through the laurel barely 40 yards from my tree. My mind and heart rate raced.

Is this real? Can I just shoot this deer? Is this some kind of trap to get me in trouble?

No one was around to answer these questions. So with shaking hands I raised the rifle and did my best to settle the dancing crosshairs. I squeezed the trigger when they were nowhere near the deer’s body — a clean miss.

To be honest, I was a little glad I missed. I wasn’t ready to bag a Pennsylvania buck. But now I had a great story to tell and this time it was a true one.

The following season I shot a button buck with my bow. I got this bow shortly before the previous year’s gun season, and had practiced with it religiously over the months heading into the 1991 bow season.

Archery came easily to me. I got good with that Browning Mirage quickly, even winning a couple medals at local tournaments before I killed that first deer. Even still, I remember my first shot at that button buck being a knee-knocking event. If it weren’t for my persistent training, I’m sure I would have missed it, too.

The photo of my first buck with antlers says it all. There’s a big smile on my face, and an orange baseball hat that says “Pennsylvania Deer Hunter” on my head. Yessir, on that day, I became an official member of Pennsylvania’s biggest fraternity – in my mind anyway. 

Within a year, the shoulder mount of that ugly deer was on my wall. No one besides a first-time, Pennsylvania buck killer would have ever mounted that deer. But I couldn’t have been more proud of it. 

At that time, antler size didn’t matter anyway. What mattered was filling your Pennsylvania buck tag. The only question asked by fellow hunters and others who knew you hunted was, “Did you get a buck this year?” Nobody ever asked, “What did he score?”

An Opportunity to Mature

Deer hunting became my identity. I spent all year thinking about it, scouting for deer and practicing with the various tools and weapons I used. Camo and blaze orange weren’t limited to hunting seasons. They were part of my everyday attire. To coworkers and relatives, I was “P.J. the deer hunter.” 

And I was pretty successful. After that first broken-horn buck, I filled my buck tag every year through the end of the 1990s – mainly with my bow. The first legal buck that came within range got shot. And I was happy.

And then came 2002 when Gary Alt, the Pennsylvania Game Commission’s world-renowned black bear biologist, took over the state’s deer management program. He preached about damaged forest habitats and an unbalanced herd in which does far outnumbered bucks. Young bucks weren’t given an opportunity to mature because they were shot by hunters like me.

At meetings across the state, Alt held up a tiny, spike rack in one hand and a long-tined, heavy set of antlers in the other. Alt promised that if PA hunters started shooting does and letting tiny bucks go, the payoff would be more bucks carrying impressive antlers. 

You’d have thought he was asking hunters to openly commit sacrilege. Literal threats calling for Alt’s head followed the Game Commission’s decision to change Pennsylvania’s long-standing rule allowing hunters to take any buck with one spike measuring at least 3 inches long. The Commission implemented a minimum of three points on one antler in most of the state and essentially four points on one antler in a sliver of western Pennsylvania along the Ohio border. At the same time, the agency declared open season on does. Bag limits were raised, tag allocations exploded, and open days for doe hunting grew exponentially.

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Hunters screamed that Alt and the agency were out to destroy deer hunting in Pennsylvania, and all the sacred traditions that went with it. There would soon be no deer left. Hunting camps would fade away. Rural economies would wither. Locusts would consume the Earth. 

Alt was forced to wear a bullet-proof vest and endure armed escorts when he appeared at speaking engagements across Pennsylvania. It got so bad that he resigned in 2004. That’s how serious deer hunting and its traditions are in Pennsylvania. We’re willing to threaten the life of the head deer guy in the state for trying to improve the forests for everything that lives there — including deer.

Changes in Whitetail Country

Meanwhile, I kept hunting deer in Pennsylvania. And it was around this time, I also started hunting deer in other states. I went to Ohio, Illinois, Maryland, Virginia, North Dakota, Texas and on and on. Taking one buck per year in Pennsylvania wasn’t enough. I wanted more.

I’ve hunted deer in 22 states now, plus Alberta and Saskatchewan. Interestingly, no matter where I’ve gone to hunt whitetails in North America, there has always been another Pennsylvania hunter in camp. I’ve hunted alongside hunters from many states, but the single constant has been having another Keystone Stater around.

It has always surprised me how far and wide I can go and still run into other Pennsylvania hunters, but it shouldn’t be surprising when you look at the data. Pennsylvania historically licenses the second-most hunters in the U.S. behind only Texas. But Texas is a giant state with more than double the population of Pennsylvania. 

According to the National Deer Association, if you look at the number of hunters compared to the land mass in each state, Pennsylvania leads the way with about 14 hunters per square mile – three more per square mile than second-place Wisconsin. Texas isn’t even in the top five. Think about that for a second. For every square mile of ground in Pennsylvania, there are 14 hunters. There are only three states in the whole country with more than 10, and Pennsylvania’s density is 30 percent higher than the next ranked state.

Anyway, Gary Alt’s preachings in the early 2000s about letting young bucks live made me start caring for the first time about antler size. 

During archery season, I started passing up bucks that were legal to shoot in my area of Pennsylvania, but which I deemed were too small. But then once gun season rolled around, that rule went out the window and I’d go back to shooting any legal buck. 

Guided by this quest for bigger antlers, my streak of filling my Pennsylvania buck tag every year came to an end somewhere around 2010. I shot bucks most years, but not every year. The bucks I shot were decent, but nothing crazy. A 130-inch eight-pointer I shot with my bow in 2003 might still be the biggest Pennsylvania buck I’ve shot to this day. I’ve shot bigger deer on my traveling hunts, but those PA bucks have always meant the most. 

Deer hunting in Pennsylvania changed for me in the southeast corner of the state. Development exploded, which gobbled up farms I once hunted. Knocking on doors to gain permission to hunt private property became nearly impossible. 

If there was a piece of property open to hunting, someone was already hunting it, and they were probably paying a hefty sum to do so. Leasing exploded in popularity, but I was stubborn. I just couldn’t do that. I always found places to hunt, whether it was public land or private. I didn’t have any great spots. But I had places to go hunting for free.

The more I hunted, and the more I started using technology to help me hunt – mainly trail cameras – the more I started realizing I had to lower my expectations for bucks. The tall-tined, heavy-horned, 150-inch hammer just didn’t exist in the places where I hunted. I went a stretch of four seasons – 2012 to 2015 – when I didn’t shoot a Pennsylvania buck because of my inflated expectations. And then things flipped for me once again.

Back to My Buck Hunting Roots

I came to the realization that I really enjoy shooting Pennsylvania bucks, even small ones. I love everything about it. I love the adrenaline surge from seeing a buck approach. I love seeing bright fletchings disappear when the arrow buries behind a buck’s shoulder. I love following blood trails, peeking ahead every few seconds looking for that white belly in the underbrush. I love the musty scent of tarsal gland as I approach a buck on the ground. I love the heft of a buck’s head as I lift it for the first time. I love dressing the deer, hauling it out of the woods, taking photos, and loading it into my truck. I love all of that. 

Sure, I can — and do — shoot does. But it’s not the same. Pennsylvania hunters don’t ask other hunters if they shot a doe. We want to know if you got a buck. Because bucks have been rare, filling your buck tag has always been the gold standard. So, even now, that’s what we aspire to do. 

In 2015, my wife and I moved from a town in Lancaster County to a rural part of western Chester County, where we are surrounded by woods and farms that hold deer. For the first time in my life, I am living side by side with deer, and I have three places to hunt, the farthest of which is 10 minutes from my driveway. I can scout anytime I want for as long or as short as I want. 

The longer I’ve lived among deer, the stronger the pull has become for me to hunt those deer. I find myself leaving Pennsylvania less often. Sure, those other states like Illinois and North Dakota offer a better chance at bigger bucks. But there’s only one November, and spending time during that magical month away from home feels like missing the point.

Through scouting, trail camera photos and sitting in trees, I’ve developed a new minimum buck standard that’s attainable for the places where I hunt. If a buck has eight points or more and a spread of at least 15 inches, he’s a shooter. And if he presents a shot on the first day of the season, or in November, I’m taking it.

Last fall I was hunting one of my spots on Oct. 4 — opening day of archery in most of the state — when I spotted an 8 point that I’d gotten several pictures of in recent days. He was right at my minimum standard: 8 points, 15-inch spread.

The buck was easing along a trail away from my position about 60 yards out when I texted a buddy.

“This one 8-pointer I’ve been watching is here,” I wrote. “He’s heading away from me, which is fine, but if he comes in range, I’m shooting.”

And I really would have been okay if this buck walked out of my life and never returned. He wasn’t a giant and I appreciated the encounter. But when that buck appeared right in front of me an hour later and started walking toward the base of my tree, I didn’t hesitate standing up, grabbing my bow and feeling the adrenaline surge. I shot that buck almost straight down at about 5 yards from the base of my tree, sinking my arrow to the fletchings. The buck bolted 40 yards and crashed just out of my sight. Then the real fun began: tracking, dressing, taking photos, and soaking it all in.

By 2018, Pennsylvania deer hunting was basically running on cruise control. The turmoil of increased antler restrictions and boosted doe kills had died. Heck, Game Commission surveys indicate most hunters support those initiatives now. And then in the winter of 2019, the Game Commission did the unthinkable. They voted to move opening day of the firearms deer season from the Monday after Thanksgiving to the Saturday in between, ending the “Hunting Monday” tradition that had been in place since 1963.

Suddenly, it was 2002 all over again. Surely this would kill deer hunting in the state. Hunting camps would fade away. Rural economies would wither. Locusts would consume the Earth. 

Of course, the Game Commission members positioned the change as a way to provide an opportunity to allow even more hunters to head out for the deer opener, since it would be on a Saturday. Times had changed. It had become tougher for hunters to take off work on a Monday, fewer schools closed that day than in the past — it was just time for a change, the commission members said.

I’ll admit I was against the switch at first. Monday was the tradition. In all the surveys done by the Game Commission on the subject, a clear majority of hunters opposed the move.

But the next year, a new state law allowed limited hunting on three Sundays in Pennsylvania, and one of the days chosen was the day following the new Saturday deer opener. Now Pennsylvania had a full opening weekend of deer hunting. That felt right. I got two days of hunting in and didn’t have to burn a single vacation day.

Of course, this is Pennsylvania, and we don’t let go of traditions easily. Hunters banded together and urged the same state lawmakers who allowed limited Sunday hunting, which paved the way for that opening weekend of deer hunting, to make it a state law that the first day of the state’s firearms deer season would be the Monday after Thanksgiving. Not just a hunting rule. They wanted this to be state law — like requiring everyone driving a vehicle to have a driver’s license. But the initiative has never been taken up by the legislature. 

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This year will be my 36^th as a Pennsylvania deer hunter. A real one. The drive hasn’t faded. Every month that isn’t September, October, November or December is just a countdown to those months. 

I still feel that anticipation before opening day. The twitching of nerves and the inability to sleep. Regardless of how old he gets, the Pennsylvania deer hunter experiences all of that on their first hunt every year, because that’s how you’re supposed to feel.

This is my Pennsylvania. These are the experiences and issues that have shaped one of the most important things in my life over the past four decades. Most hunters around the country won’t get it.

Why wouldn’t you be allowed to hunt on Sundays? Who wants to shoot a spike?

But Pennsylvania deer hunters get it. I’ve met deer hunters from all over North America in my 36 years chasing whitetails. There are many great, diehard deer hunters in every state. But they are not like the ones from Pennsylvania.