Archery season gets started across Pennsylvania

Harrisburg — It’s probably safe to say that most people, given the chance to trade their cellphone for a landline, swap out their vehicle for a horse and buggy, or replace their washing machine with a bucket, a bar of rough homemade soap and a 100-yard walk to the nearest river, would opt to keep their modern conveniences.

Tools offering efficiency, ease and comfort are hard to forgo.

There are exceptions, though. Bowhunters – who represent one of every two deer hunters in Pennsylvania overall – each year willingly go afield with stick and string, albeit often modernized, finding attraction in the challenge and intimacy of close-range encounters.

More than 350,000 bowhunters will pursue whitetails across Pennsylvania this fall. Archery season began in Wildlife Management Units 2B, 5C and 5D – those are the ones surrounding Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, respectively – on Sept. 21 and runs through Nov. 29, including two Sundays, Nov. 17 and 24, then comes back in from Dec. 26-Jan. 25.

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The statewide archery season kicks off on Oct. 5 and includes one Sunday, Nov. 17, before ending on Nov. 22. It reopens Dec. 26-Jan. 20.

“No other state has as many bowhunters as Pennsylvania,” said Game Commission Executive Director Steve Smith. “And it’s not hard to see why so many love the season. It’s a special time, with the chance to hunt in mild weather against a backdrop of amazing fall color early on and the promise of the whitetail rut later.

“Hunters appreciate what’s available and take advantage of it.”

They take deer, too. Last year, in the 2023-24 seasons, archers harvested an estimated 154,850 whitetails (83,370 bucks and 71,480 antlerless deer). That was about 36% of the overall harvest.

That matched the most recent five-year average and is in line with what’s occurring on a larger scale. According to the National Deer Association’s 2024 “Deer Report,” in the three seasons from 2020 to 2022, archers took, on average, about 34% of all deer harvested across what’s considered the Northeast region, a 13-state area stretching from Maine to Virginia.

Hunters who want the opportunity to fill a tag during archery season should hunt where deer want to be, said David Stainbrook, the Game Commission’s Deer and Elk Section supervisor. That’s typically around food and cover.

He recommends hunters scout for fresh deer sign around places rich in green browse and, later, hard and soft mast, which includes everything from apples and agricultural crops to acorns. If those places are close to thick escape and bedding cover, all the better, he said.

Often, though, the real key is just being out there. Deer have large home ranges, Stainbrook said, taking in hundreds of acres.

“So, if I could give hunters one piece of advice, it would be to just hunt as much as possible,” Stainbrook said. “Putting more time in the woods is going to increase your odds of harvesting a deer.”

That’s true throughout the season. Every week of the 2023-24 archery season contributed at least 10% to the overall harvest, with some weeks accounting for as much as 25%.

Smith, for one, will be out there, enjoying the season for all sorts of reasons, just like so many others.

“Pennsylvania’s archery deer season is big on opportunity, and I wouldn’t miss it,” Smith said.