Game Commission releases 2024-25 deer harvest numbers

​The Pennsylvania Game Commission (PGC) has released the 2024-25 deer harvest estimates and they show an eleven percent increase over the previous year. 

According to the PGC, hunters harvested an estimated 476,880 deer of which 175,280 were antlered deer and 301,600 were antlerless. This is in comparison to the 2023-24 season when 430,010 deer were taken. 

The 2024-25 buck harvest was up two percent over the year before and over the most recent three-year average. 

Th 2024-25 antlerless harvest increased 17 percent over the year before and 21 percent over the three-year average. 

David Stainbrook, PGC Deer and Elk Section Supervisor said,” harvest estimates can fluctuate from year to year due to a number of factors, so we caution reading too much into annual variations in harvest. The trends are a truer picture of what’s going on as we manage deer over six-year population trends,” he explained.  

In case you’re wondering how the PGC deer estimates are calculated, they use antlered and antlerless harvest reports submitted by hunters in combination with data from deer checked by crews at processors across the state. Steinbrook added, “Last season hunters reported 147,000 deer online while PGC personnel checked more than 27,000 deer at processors around the state. And across the state, about 28 percent of hunters took antlered deer which is the highest rate since at least the late 1980s. That has become the norm since the implementation of antler point restrictions and most of those bucks were older ones. In addition, two of every three were at least 2.5 years old. That’s a huge change from decades ago when most of the harvest was made up of 1.5-year-old deer,” he cited.   

As for antlerless deer, hunters turned about 26 percent of their tags into a harvested deer which is consistent with past seasons and about 69 percent of those were adult females. 

Looking at harvests per season, the PGC reported firearm seasons resulted in the largest harvests. It accounted for an estimated 283,760 deer taken that consisted of 86,000 antlered and 197,230 antlerless deer. 

Archers took an estimated 87,540 antlered and 90,600 antlerless while muzzleloader hunters got an estimated 1,210 antlered and 13,770 antlerless deer. 

Here are the estimated harvest numbers by local Wildlife Management Units for 2024-25 with last year’s numbers in parentheses, plus popular Potter County (WMU 4A), and with antlered deer noted as (Ant) and antlerless as Atl): 

*WMU 3D: 56,000 Ant (6,200), and 7,700 Atl (7,300)
*WMU 4A: 4,000 Ant (5,700), and 9,200 Atl (9,300)
*WMU 4C: Ant 8000 (8200), and 12,000 Atl (6700)
* WMU 5C: 7,700 Ant (9,100), and 17,000 Atl (13,000)
*WMU 5D: 2,300 Ant (2,900), and 7,700 Atl (6,700)

Other WMU numbers can be found on PGC’s website at www.pgc.pa.gov.







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