rrt,
Yes, I'm aware of the spawning situation. Our cabin is near Tionesta, for what it's worth, and we hunt National Forest or sometimes just outside of it. Lots of brookie streams around, and on hunting excursions, it's common to walk down to the streams and have a gander at some spawning brookies. Yeah, they're winding down, but still happening.
I've steelhead fished using the cabin as a base camp a number of times. Bout an hour (a little less to the east side tribs, a little more to the west side tribs). Just never did it in deer season. Well, once I did, as I was hunting the whole week and took everything just in case, and killed a buck Tuesday morning so Wed-Sat was all fishing. But with kids, I don't get that kinda time anymore.
I'm 35, soon to be 36. Not old, but getting there. I'm at that point where I can still do everything I used to, but unlike before, I feel it afterwards. I still like to hunt. I used to do bow, small game, turkey, the works, plus fish 50-100 times per year. But now I have 2 kids, we both work, with long commutes, and we're 5 hrs away from the nearest family which can help. So now I'm lucky if I fish a dozen days per year and hunt 2 (rifle season only). Between hunting and fishing, if I'm forced to choose one or the other, fishing is gonna win, and I just might be at that decision point. My oldest is 3 and fishing will be realistic before hunting, so there's that too, though I do want him to have some hunting heritage as well. Part of that is the desire to "be like daddy" as he grows up, so that's one motivation to keep an interest in hunting.
As for the deer herd, I agree, but it's ever so slowly improving in the last 3-5 years. "The slaughter" was all the way back in 2003, I believe. Hate the idea that I took part, but I did. We had 8 guys in camp and killed 16 doe in one day. Took em about a decade to admit that the deer herd did not drop from high 20's to 10-15 deer per forested square mile as they intended and kept reporting, but rather fell to 1-2 deer per forested square mile. I haven't seen an estimate, and all but guarantee we're still below 10, but it's more than 1-2.
From 2007-2010, our camp had 5 guys hunting an average of 3 days in rifle season. That's around 60 man-days of hunting. Grand total combined deer sighted was 10. And several were duplicates. We saw 12 bear in that time for comparison, and 40+ coyotes (killing a half dozen or so). I had one deer season (2008 I think) with 20ish inches of only semi-fresh snow on the ground, scouted 3 days and hunted 3, and saw a grand total of 3 deer tracks. And I hunted several different areas, figuring I'd eventually find some yarded up or something, but no dice. We did kill a buck in camp, I tracked one of the larger tracks for 5 or 6 hrs and ended up pushing it past my brother, a medium 8 pt, but 1 out of 5 is pretty bad anyway you cut it. The bow hunting was much more successful, but that takes place downstate, where the herd wasn't decimated.
That was the lowest of the low. Now, we're not back to 20's and 30's per man per day, but 5-10 is pretty typical. Out of 5 in camp we expect to kill 2 bucks, with 1 and 3 as both reasonably likely possibilities. It's a toss up on whether there are more coyote or deer now, and I haven't been able to say that for quite a while. Still more coyote tracks, but you see more deer (since coyotes are nocturnal and all).
