Sometimes it is hard for me to come to terms with the fact that I am now the same age as the elders. But like it or not, time moves on.

I find it satisfying to be able to draw on decades of experience and memories of hunting, fishing and other outdoor activities. My father wasn’t a hunter, so I didn’t start hunting until I was in my late teens when I was old enough to buy my own guns and gear and hunt unaccompanied. That was in the early 1970s, so my personal hunting career has now spanned over half a century (that almost makes me feel older than the old folks). During that time, we have seen many changes in the structure and culture of hunting in Pennsylvania.

Some of the biggest transformations involved deer hunting. Because deer hunting in Pennsylvania was regulated as a form of recreation rather than subsistence, the prevailing standard was one deer per hunter per season.

Deer licenses were allocated in relatively small numbers based on county quotas and were also limited to one license per hunter per season. The doe and buck seasons did not run concurrently. A two- or three-day deer season was held separately after the two-week buck season. If a hunter took out a deer license but harvested a buck, he was done deer hunting for that season and the deer license became useless paper.

There has always been a small but open contingent of uninformed hunters opposed to harvesting animals on any scale. Any deer license allocation, no matter how big or how small, was too much. Some of these people would apply for a deer license and then tear it up if they were issued one as the wrong way to “save” a deer.

During the 1980s, wildlife managers began to face the problems created in some areas by large deer populations. Hunting is the best and most cost-effective way to reduce the deer population in a given area. In 1987, hunters with the proper licenses were allowed to take two deer per year in the Southeast Special Regulations Area. Then, in 1988, hunters were allowed to take two deer per year statewide with proper licenses.

Deer license allowances were also increased in some counties, and sometimes a significant amount of licenses went unsold because a hunter was only allowed one deer license per season. This was changed to allow hunters to apply for a second so-called bonus license if deer licenses remained after a certain date. Currently, of course, a hunter can apply for and receive up to six deer licenses, subject to availability. We’ve come a long way from the “one deer a year” generations.

Pennsylvania’s first archery deer season was in 1951. It was a “buck only” season that year with 5,542 sold and 33 hunters reporting a buck kill. In 1957, archery hunters were allowed to take either a buck or a doe, and the total harvest that season was 376 bucks and 982 bucks. In 1993, archery hunters were required to have a deer license if they wanted to take a deer during the archery season, but if they harvested a deer, they could still take a buck during the archery season or of firearms.

What marked perhaps the biggest boom in archery hunting in Pennsylvania came in 1973, when compound bows were legalized. I started working in a sporting goods store in 1974 and saw firsthand the amount of interest and the number of compound bows for new bowhunters attracted. Compound bows at all price points sold almost as fast as I could unpack a shipment.

It was also interesting to watch all the disapproval of compounds from many old school archers who openly resisted this new technology. Their motives were endless, mostly selfish, and mostly baseless. “It will put too many evil hunters in the forest.” “They’ll hurt a lot of deer shooting at them at range.” “Compounds make photography too easy.” And further.

Of course compound bows became the standard and participation in archery hunting exploded in just a few years. I can’t remember the last time I talked to someone using a recurve or longbow for hunting. What I find hilariously ironic is that in the early 2000s, all of the exact same arguments that traditional archers leveled at compounds in the early 1970s were leveled by compound shooters at the use of crossbows in Pennsylvania. And they were even more baseless because we had decades of crossbow hunting experience to draw from in several states, including our neighbor Ohio. Crossbows were legalized for general use in Pennsylvania in 2009.

Arguably, the biggest transition in deer management in Pennsylvania began in 1999 when Gary Alt took over as Chief of Deer Management for the Pennsylvania Game Commission. During his five years at the helm, Alt has delighted or disgusted or both nearly every deer hunter in the state.

But love it or hate it, we have antler restrictions and huge deer license allocations, and an ongoing list of changes to deer management and deer hunting: wildlife management units instead of county boundaries; concurrent buck and deer seasons; and starting firearms deer season on Saturday instead of Monday just to list a few.

When it comes to what the future holds for deer hunting, perhaps the most telling aspect will be whether anything can be done about chronic wasting disease. First discovered in wild deer right here in Blair and Beford counties in 2012, this insidious disease continues to spread despite efforts to contain it. Looking recently at the latest map on the Game Commission website showing the latest outbreaks of CWD and the newest disease management area established because of them, it doesn’t inspire much optimism. Hopefully, a long-awaited breakthrough will happen soon.