What are the new regulations for deer season, and how can they effect you?

A new schedule has been released for the upcoming wild game seasons in Pennsylvania. First, the opening day of firearm deer season has been moved up to the Saturday after Thanksgiving, November 30, instead of the traditional Monday following Thanksgiving.

This will now create a 13 day season which includes three different Saturdays, unlike in previous years where there were only two Saturdays. Due to this extension there will be a shortening of days to the late November turkey. This will has also caused an expanding of the mid-October muzzleloader and special firearms deer seasons to include bears statewide.

This caused an increase to the season of two weeks for the statewide archery bear season and delaying it until after two weeks following the muzzleloader and special firearms bear seasons making the season go into Martin Luther King Jr. Day. The board voted to allow 903,000 antlerless deer licenses statewide, which has increased from the 838,000 licenses in for 2018-19 deer season.

As a hunter, there are positives and negatives to both sides, but the positives are more prevalent. The fact that there is now an entirely new Saturday added, with it also being the opening day is going to bring out many more hunters who are usually unable to participate in the opening day hunt across the state. It has also allowed an extra day to hunt deer.

This, for example, could help me be able to harvest one, or multiple deer. A regulation that wasn’t impacted is the capability of being able to harvest both Buck and Doe (male and female deer) during the entire firearm season which will go from November 30 until December 14 in the highly populated areas with deer and people. This is a positive with the extended season.

An example is WMU 2B, which covers most of Allegheny county, while most of the other WMUs across the state are buck only until Dec. 7-14 where both buck and doe are able to be harvested.  There are a few negatives to this, though. It is not as safe it would be in the woods hunting on the opening Saturday with the new plethora of hunters.

To be able to legally hunt you have to wear your blaze orange hats and vests which can be spotted from miles away, but in dense brush where deer the like to hide, they can be hard to see. Another scary fact is, even if you are miles away, a bullet from a rifle can go for miles before dying out of the air.

If you are in a tree stand you would be a lot safer, but if you are on the ground you will need to be aware of the dangers. Even though hunters are mandated to go through a safety course, you still need to be cautious. Another issue you may run into with all hunters out is fighting for “your” spot.

This could be an issue for many who can only hunt public land. This may cause more people to “cut” other hunters off or ruining their hunt with rude or inconsiderate actions. Moving the first day of deer season up to the Saturday after Thanksgiving was positive for the sport, but hunters will just have to be more careful of where they stand or the direction they shoot. Remember, safety first.