DON'T FORGET TO SUBMIT A HARVEST REPORT CARD

The Game Commission relies on information from hunters to estimate deer harvests. If all hunters who harvested a deer would send in their harvest report cards, as required by law, harvest estimates wouldn't be needed. However, the agency was forced to begin using reporting rates to estimate deer harvests in the 1980s, when report card returns from hunters began to decline.

In 2005, the reporting rate for deer harvests was 40 percent for antlerless deer and 36 percent for antlered deer. In 2004, reporting rates dropped to 40 percent, then the lowest level ever recorded by the Game Commission. Although the agency's method of estimating deer harvests works with these low reporting rates, the dropping compliance by hunters to report their harvests reflects poorly on them.

Each year, according to Game Commission Wildlife Management Bureau Director Calvin W. DuBrock, about 75 deer-aging personnel check and record information from harvested deer. Over the 2005-2006 hunting seasons, more than 28,000 deer were examined. The information collected then was cross-checked with harvest report cards submitted by hunters to establish reporting rates for antlered and antlerless deer by Wildlife Management Units (WMU).

"Slightly more than 136,600 deer harvest report cards were received from hunters for deer taken in the most recent deer seasons," DuBrock noted. "That we continue to receive such a significant number of report cards indicates many Pennsylvania hunters are following through with their obligation to report their deer harvest, and that they do believe reporting is important.

"But when you consider more than 350,000 deer were taken by hunters in those seasons, it quickly becomes obvious that we can - and must - do better. The Game Commission is committed in its efforts to manage deer to the best of its ability for all Pennsylvanians, but we have to rely on hunters to provide critical harvest information."

Created in 1895 as an independent state agency, the Game Commission is responsible for conserving and managing all wild birds and mammals in the Commonwealth, establishing hunting seasons and bag limits, enforcing hunting and trapping laws, and managing habitat on the 1.4 million acres of State Game Lands it has purchased over the years with hunting and furtaking license dollars to safeguard wildlife habitat.  The agency also conducts numerous wildlife conservation programs for schools, civic organizations and sportsmen's clubs. 

The Game Commission does not receive any general state taxpayer dollars for its annual operating budget.  The agency is funded by license sales revenues; the state's share of the federal Pittman-Robertson program, which is an excise tax collected through the sale of sporting arms and ammunition; and monies from the sale of oil, gas, coal, timber and minerals derived from State Game Lands.

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