Trends indicate Butler County deer harvests higher than elsewhere
Over the past three hunting seasons, total deer harvests in Pennsylvania have risen each year, with significant influence from Butler County, according to data from the state Game Commission.
Deer harvests increased from 376,810 in 2021-22 to 422,960 in 2022-23 to 430,010 in 2023-24 across the state, shows data accounting for all deer hunting seasons, including rifle, archery and muzzleloader.
With some of rifle season and the coming muzzleloader season ahead, it remains to be seen whether the 2024-25 season will continue a trend of increasing deer harvests across the state and in Butler County.
“This year’s results will become clear after the conclusion of all deer seasons. We usually release our report in March,” said Travis Lau, communications director for the Game Commission. “The antlerless license allocation did increase this year, meaning an increase in antlerless harvest might be expected. Time will tell.”
Deer harvests spiked in Pennsylvania during the 2020-21 season, with 435,180, before settling back to normal levels. Lau attributes this spike to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The pandemic giving people more time to hunt might have influenced the 2020-21 harvest,” Lau said. “But also consider that hunters took nearly as many bucks last year as they did in 2020-21.”
One contributing factor to the pandemic spike and the yearly rise may be the Game Commission’s 2019 decision to move the start of the rifle deer season up to the Saturday after Thanksgiving, two days prior to its traditional Monday start. The commission stated this was done to allow more hunters to participate, and the decision came after feedback from hunters.
“Even before the board proposed a change, we would regularly hear from hunters who asked that the opening day be moved to Saturday, often because it would allow for them or their family members to take part, which might not have been possible on a Monday because of work or other obligations,” Lau said.
Butler County takes up parts of three of Pennsylvania’s Wildlife Management Units, districts drawn up by the state Game Commission to manage the state’s huntable game population. One of those districts, WMU 2B, takes up nearly all of Allegheny County as well as the southern portion of Butler County.
Last year, unit 2B was the top district in all of Pennsylvania in terms of deer harvested per square mile, with hunters racking up 16.9 deer per square mile and about 23,000 deer overall, with 16,000 of those deer antlerless and 7,000 with antlers.
Unit 2D, which takes up the northeast part of Butler County, harvested the most total deer last year, with about 33,200 — 21,400 antlerless and 11,800 with antlers. This amounts to 13.4 deer harvests per square mile, which ranks third in the state for deer harvested per square mile.
Unit 1A, which takes up the northwest portion of the county, had 21,800 deer harvested last season, 8,000 of them with antlers. That amounts to 11.8 deer harvests per square mile, ranking sixth in the state.
Both units 2D and 1A bucked the statewide trend last season and marked decreases in deer harvests over the prior season. Unit 2D’s decline was steep, from 14.9 deer harvests per square mile to 13.4 in one season.
Lau says numbers for each district don’t represent the growth of deer hunting or the proliferation of deer so much as they reflect the deer management goals of the Game Commission.
“If the goal is to increase deer numbers within a given Wildlife Management Unit, fewer licenses are allocated,” Lau said. “If the goal is to decrease numbers, more licenses are allocated. Usually, a higher allocation results in higher antlerless harvest.”
This June, residents of the 1B, 3A, and 2G district, all in the far north of the state, got first dibs on purchasing antlerless deer licenses before any other residents.
While there are three separate deer hunting seasons in Pennsylvania — rifle, archery, and muzzloader — the majority of deer in Pennsylvania are hunted by rifle. Last season, 59.4% of the 430,010 deer harvests — about 254,710 — came during the rifle season. Another 36% of the harvests occurred during the archery season, while the remaining 4.8% occurred during muzzloader season.
