NDA's Stance on Deer Management & Hunting Opportunities | East Meets West Hunt - Ep 373

Beau Martonik is joined by Nick Pinizzotto, CEO of the National Deer Association. They spent the morning at Nick’s camp in central Pennsylvania discussing deer management, deer populations, hunting mature bucks, the Saturday Deer Opener, how polling works, opportunity vs. quality, hunter retainment, the public lands initiative, and much more!
Topics:
00:00:00 - Intro
00:00:19 - Nick Pinizzotto’s camp
00:05:23 - Too many or too little deer in Pennsylvania?
00:13:04 - Nick’s property management strategy for deer
00:19:18 - Targeting mature bucks is a lonely road
00:29:04 - NDA’s stance on the PA Saturday Deer Opener
00:38:24 - How polling works
00:47:34 - Is there such a thing as too much opportunity?
00:50:37 - Best method for retainment of hunters
01:04:52 - NDA’s Public Lands Initiative
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[@gregoryjohnson1317]

Good listening to. It's cool to hear from other PA hunters. I feel the same way about the Saturday hunting, and I'm 51. I passed up shooting a few smaller bucks and haven't shot a bigger deer in 5 yrs. Life is short, have fun, and praise God!

[@user-ps7lp5ob4i]

You two did a fantastic job discussing and breaking down some very HOT topics in PA.
I really feel the better solution to the Saturday/Sunday/Monday debate is to move the season back one week.
The day really isnt the issue, its the holiday. Ive seen Nick get alot of things done, but moving Thanksgiving maybe a bit much. And for Beau i think they could add some more archery in the gap after bear season. Win-win.

[@Leatherwoodoutdoors]

Going to have to dissagree with Nick's take that the Saturday opener increased opportunity as a net positive. We see the numbers are still in decline. The goal was believed if there was truly more opportunities there would be an increase in hunters. This did not happen. To claim the decline has slowed is just an admition of failure on the Saturday opener. That day used to be small game Saturday. That got way more kids into hunting than a deer opener and that was said by a former Commissioner executive director before the change.
The recent PGC survey supporting the Saturday opener was an internally biased survey. They paid for it, and provided question content as well as the hunters surveyed. Intended or not it was biased. On page 7, hunter participation was surveyed. IN THE LAST FIVE YEARS DID YOUR PARTICIPATION IN HUNTING INCREASE, DECREASE OR STAY THE SAME. 50% stayed the same, 35% decreased and only 15% increased participation. Next question was; OF THOSE THAT STATED INCREASED (15%) WHAT INFLUENCED YOUR INCREASED PARTICIPATION? only 13% of the 15% identified because of the Saturday and Sunday opportunity. That equates to 1.95% or only 38 hunters of the 2008 hunters surveyed increased their participation due to the Saturday and Sunday! BIG HOLE SHOT IN THE PGC POSITION 60% preferred the Saturday opener.
Why did the pgc ignore years of data proving otherwise? Why do they refuse to do another survey or examine to see if they were correct because the numbers are not showing a positive from the change except for a small vocal minority. That change divided hunters more than antler restrictions and crossbows combined. Nick, you should not be on the side of dividing hunters. Former commisioner Jim Daly who initiated the move to saturday said it was wrong and tried to reverse course and resigned because of it knowing it would cause damage and he was 100% correct.. from 1982-1999. There was a decline of hunters over a long period of time but there were a couple instances where sales REVERSED COURSE AND INCREASED but then eventually declined. During this time the amount of bucks being shot doubled yet there was still a decline in hunters! Even having the success rate goe up didn't stop the overall decline of sales. Now from 2000-2008 we still see an overall decline but wait, two times we had INCREASES in sales. Minimal but increases nonetheless. So far, nothing abnormal. from 2008-2013 we had a steady increase in sales. overall that would mean a 6 YEAR INCREASE of around 924,000 to 947000 hunters during a Monday opener! That's a 23,000 increase! This is recent history! from 2018-2021. REMEMBER 2020 was high because of Covid. Even if you kept that number its around 24,000 increase from 2018 But the overall net gain from 2018 is only 2,478. Covid was the factor, not the Saturday. But wait, there's more. First let's look at why 2007-2013 had such an increase. During that time the following happened :
These are just a few highlights from that time frame.
2008. Extra Saturday to junior pheasant hunting. Crow expanded to 120 days. added wmu to Bobcat season.
2009 crossbows made legal for everyone.
2010. Saturday bear opener & 5 day archery. Bobcat and fisher expansion. Elk expansion opportunities. junior rabbit season Expansion
2011. Adult transfer of doe tag to mentored youth
Western side dropped to 3 points on a side for buck.
Porcupine season added.
Expansion of species during spring gobbler such as
Starlings, groundhogs.
Extra month of squirrel hunting.
Extra day of bear. Concurrent deer and bear seasons in some wmus
2012. Archery extents 1 day
Fall turkey to mentored youth
Rifles in turkey season in 3 wmus
Youth spring gobbler
2013 wmu split
No significant changes. Here afterwards UNTIL 2019. What happened in 2019?
The 2019 season saw the most significant regulation changes implemented that hunters responded positively to than possibly any other season.
CREATED new October muzzle loader 7 day bear season that included 2 Saturdays….Resident and non-resident muzzleloader licenses increased 5,182
CREATED a new 12 day statewide archery bear season and extended late archery and flintlock seasons for a week…Resident and non resident archery licenses increased by 6022
CREATED extended bear season to encompass the entire first week of rifle deer, including two Saturdays in 12 management units and expanded to 2 weeks including 3 Saturdays in 4 separate units….Resident and non resident bear licenses increased a whopping 27,174
CREATED a new separate elk archery season….Brought in 16,622 applications.
CREATED Increased pheasant stockings….Adult and junior pheasant permits up 3,551
CREATED A new 3 day special firearms season including one Saturday for juniors and senior licence holders and certain disabled person permit holders.
CREATED a new January antlerless elk season.
CREATED Bobcat hunting and trapping seasons were expanded to unit 4b
CREATED Fisher trapping season was expanded to unit 4a
CREATED 12-17 year olds now permitted to participate in the mentor youth and adult program respectively.
CREATED leashed tracking dogs now identified in the digest for the first year.
CREATED dove field expansion on game lands.
CREATED The season limit on beavers had been doubled from 20 to 40 in units 2a and 2b.
SO general license sales only increased .4% less than half a percent! How in the world can they have claimed ” license sales up after the Saturday opener “?? while dismissing all these obvious license increases having little to nothing to do with the opening day?
So, we see an intentional dismissing of other factors, an intentional dismissing of increases in sales not long ago and we see a trend where hunter success and more time does not equal more hunters. But, we can say that we can get little increases for short periods of time with an abundance of new expansions and added seasons. But it takes abundance. This does not mean this will maintain nor turn the tide of decline for good in our state. We can conclude it does not prove the Saturday as the MAIN reason therefore, its been refuted with facts!
Let’s relate some of the PGC Saturday opener hunter survey results to real world impacts. Page 7, 8, and 19 identify only 1.9 to 2% of the 2008 hunters contacted claimed the Saturday and Sunday increased their participation in the past 5 years or was a contributing factor to them hunting the 2020 opening day. Extrapolating that ratio across all 852,415 general hunting license sales of 2021, would mean the Saturday opener only positively benefited 17,000 hunters. We have approximately 200,000-250, 000 hunters that hunt from camps. I would say a safe estimate is 75% if not more, of camp hunters do not like or hate the Saturday opener. So the PGC disenfranchised about 150,000-187,000 hunters and benefitted about 17,000 hunters with the Saturday opener.
The Resident Senior Lifetime Combo Renewal category had been increasing each of the past 14 years by 3200 to 4200 licenses. This category has NOTHING to do with any opening day scenario. That category increased by 3,936 licenses. This was more licenses than the .4 % general sales increase!!! In actuality licence sales decreased when all the impacts are honesty assessed.
Lastly, I hope you see the numbers don't lie!