Bob Bender's days of deer hunting in Pennsylvania could be over.
The Manheim resident Sunday told the board of Pennsylvania Game Commissioners that unless some changes are made to the agency's deer management program, he's not buying another hunting license.
"I will not continue to hunt if you continue to decimate the deer herd," Bender said. "I can enjoy the outdoors without buying a hunting license."
Sunday was the first day of the game commissioners' three-day winter meeting to propose hunting seasons and bag limits for the 2008-09 hunting year.
Each year, the Sunday session is set aside exclusively for public comment.
Today, agency staff and biologists will discuss the status of hunting and wildlife populations in the state. Tuesday, the board members will hash out a proposed slate of hunting seasons and bag limits for the coming year.
The board will vote to finalize that slate in April.
As in the winter meetings held the past several years, the board heard an earful about deer on Sunday.
One after another, forest managers and timber industry lobbyists told the commissioners there are still too many deer in Pennsylvania, and they urged the Game Commission to continue with its current deer management program.
And one by one, hunters lined up to tell the commissioners there are too few deer in the state. They urged the board to cut back on the deer hunting seasons and bag limits to allow the herd to grow.
For the first time in several years, the Game Commission is proposing to cut back on the firearms doe season in one part of the state. The season elsewhere would mirror last year's.
The proposed change would affect four northcentral wildlife management units, where much of the land is open to public hunting and where hunters have been screaming the loudest about a lack of deer.
In those four units, the firearms doe season next fall would be reduced from 14 days to nine. Agency biologists today plan to discuss why the reduction is recommended.
Dan Devlin, director of the state Department of Conservation and Natural Resources (DCNR) Bureau of Forestry, told the commissioners the proposed reduction is a mistake.
DCNR is the largest landowner in the four wildlife management units.
"We are confounded by this proposal because it is such a departure from the commission's stated goals of managing for healthy deer and healthy habitat," he said.
According to Devlin, despite several years of liberalized deer hunting allowed by the Game Commission, the forest in those four units is just beginning to show signs of recovery after decades of overbrowsing by deer.
"Any effort to reduce hunter opportunity and (doe) harvest could exacerbate already poor habitat conditions," he said.
Bainbridge resident Stephen L. Mohr, who served as a game commissioner from 1998 to 2006, told the commissioners he believes the agency's deer management program is allowing too many deer to be killed each year.
"What has occurred in Pennsylvania with deer management, it has been led on a path of destruction," he said.
Mohr currently is president of the statewide hunting organization Unified Sportsmen of Pennsylvania, which is suing the Game Commission, claiming the agency's deer management program is to blame for the alleged lack of deer in the state.
He presented the board of commissioners with a petition circulated in recent weeks by state Rep. Tom Creighton of Rapho Township and signed by 592 people concerned about "a lack of deer in Pennsylvania," Mohr said.
Also Sunday, the game commissioners heard from several bird enthusiasts concerned about a proposal by the agency to outlaw owning nanday conjures — a green, South American parrot commonly kept as pets.
The goal of the proposal is to prevent escaped or released nandays from establishing populations in the wild.
Lancaster veterinarian John Hall told the commissioners there's no threat nandays ever would establish wild colonies in the state.
Nandays are tropical birds, Hall said, and could not survive a Pennsylvania winter.
E-mail: preilly@lnpnews.com