Pennsylvania hunters killed an estimated 435,180 deer during the 2020-21 hunting seasons

[dutch777]

4. Some of this may have to do with the length of the seasons and how the licenses are allocated

I grew up in PA where the first few days of deer season (regular rifle) many school districts just closed because half or more of the kids wouldn't show up anyway. It's a popular "sport" in PA, to say the least. Among my family and friends it was a right of passage and very few boys didn't hunt. At that time (long time ago, deer were mixed with dinosaurs) I think bow hunting season came first, then black powder, then rifle. I think the first two seasons were a couple weeks long, then rifle season started with buck season for two weeks. Anybody who bought a hunting license could participate. But when it came to hunting doe, you had to apply for a special license addendum called a doe permit, and it was by county only and much more limited in number while the base license was good for the whole state and anyone could get one. Doe season in most counties was only a day or two long although they could lengthen it if the weather was terrible or some other factor limited the harvest. The Game Commission had number targets for buck, doe and total kill in order to maintain the health of the state herds. Don't know if all that is still true but suspect its close.

I don't know about the accuracy but I remember reading a long time ago an estimate that when the state of PA still had wolf packs, other predators and allowed farmers to kill any deer that got into their crops or orchards, around 1900, the total deer population of the state of PA was estimated at only about 250,000. Now, in addition to the number killed by hunters, State Farm Insurance actuaries assume 115,000 deer will be hit by cars annually-- usually a fatal interaction for the deer and real messy for the car. Current estimate of the state deer population is 1.5 million and its still climbing most years. My dad's job had him driving all over the state when I was a kid and he averaged about a deer a year hit or near miss in his 60,000 yearly road miles. There were also turkey, pheasant and others that I remember having to pick out in smelly nasty pieces from the grills of his many Ford sedans.