I don't hunt PA, but the antler-restriction craze is also beginning to take hold down here in TX on public managed lands. As someone with some training in wildlife management, I can attest that the supposed "experts" who are advocating this kind of management are not telling the whole story, are not responsible in their research planning, or else they are very poorly-trained.
My hypothesis is that for purposes of producing better quality bucks on heavily-hunted lands, antler restrictions (as they currently exist) are better than no restrictions at all. But that is where the benefit ends. In the short term, antler restrictions protect a majority of the yearling bucks in a population. In populations that are over-hunted for yearling bucks (i.e. most public situations), there is an almost immediate noticeable improvement in buck age class, and thus the prime factor in producing better antlers. So, on public range where it was once rare to see 2.5 and older deer, hunters will start seeing them much more often after even one year of antler restrictions. These older deer will have more antler mass and more body size, so hunters will generally be happy to see this change.
The problem with antler restrictions will not show up until they have been in place for several breeding generations. After the initial benefit of age structure has reached its peak, the negative factor of genetics will begin to figure much more seriously into the equation. Now hunters are seeing more older deer, but the older deer will begin to decline in terms of true trophy potential. More older deer will begin to be seen that do not meet the antler restrictions. This is due to heavy reverse selective pressure (animals being removed from the gene pool before they can do much breeding) being placed on the youngest trophy-potential animals, and bucks with the poorest genes in terms of antler potential in all age categories are being positively selected (allowed to stay in the gene pool).
In more common language, trophy-potential yearling bucks most often grow antlers that meet or exceed the antler restriction in their first year of life. Thus they can, and most likely will, be removed from the population before or during their very first breeding season. If they do manage to escape the first year, they will almost surely be harvested their second year, when their trophy potential begins to blossom.
On the other hand, a vast majority of bucks with poor trophy potential will not meet the antler restriction during their first, second, or even third year of life, and will be left to do most of the breeding after the trophy-potential bucks are harvested. Indeed, the worst of these may NEVER grow antlers that meet the restriction, and thus will be allowed to remain in the breeding pool (in fact, attain dominant status) for the whole of their natural lives. You can easily see where the deer population antler gene pool is headed. Right into the toilet, so to speak.
Any simple model of genetic population selection pressure will reveal this flaw in the antler-restriction scenario. Thus, it surprises me that so many supposed wildlife experts are either not doing their homework, or are just giving the hunters a "quick fix" at the expense of the long-term antler quality of a deer population.
My warning is this: BEWARE OF ANTLER RESTRICTIONS, they are not the wonderful fix they are made out to be, or may even seem to be during the first few years of implementation.
There is no "quick fix" to improving antler quality. Millions of acres of prime deer habitat is closely managed with much better tools than just the antler restriction model, and still have made only incremental progress towards better antlers. Improving antler quality is a complex management task, but it can be successful when the basics of sound population dynamics, genetic modeling, close harvest control, and habitat quality are applied with common sense using consistent practices.
Unfortunately, many of the finer nuances of utilizing these techniques are not, and probably never will be, available in an open public hunting situation. It is extremely difficult to fix exact harvest quotas by sex and age on open public range. It is even more difficult to legislate the type of harvest criteria required to achieve positive selective pressure on trophy-class bucks. Due to these factors, the only way to truly achieve trophy-class management of whitetail deer on openly-hunted public land is through changing the psychology of every public hunter. That is a monumental, if not impossible, task.
