Afield: Statewide hunting changes defining bear, deer seasons in Pennsylvania

If you are a deer or bear hunter, you are living during a time of big changes. And even more changes are expected next fall. While the full effect of these changes are not yet known, here’s what has happened so far:

Expanded bear season on track to break records

The third leg of bear season just ended Wednesday, and thus far, the black bear harvest is on track to set a new record. At the conclusion of the “Regular Firearms” season, the number of bears harvested already topped several of the previous top-10 harvests. If hunters have an average success rate during the extended season, this year’s harvest could top 4,000. That would place it in the top three of all time — possibly No. 1.

Third leg? If you are wondering what I am talking about, here are the details. Certain bear seasons were lengthened and expanded geographically this year in hopes of lowering the ever-growing bear population — a population estimated to be more than 20,000.

Leg one — For the first time, Pennsylvania held a statewide seven-day muzzleloader season this year, Oct. 19-26. Previously, the muzzleloader season had been held in wildlife management units 2B, 5B, 5C and 5D — areas where there are few bears. Also new this year was a statewide “Special Firearms” season for junior, senior, disabled and active-duty military hunters. Hunters taking advantage of these new expanded seasons harvested 1,334 bears, compared to only 12 in 2018.

Leg two — The statewide archery bear season was held Oct. 28 to Nov. 9, double the length of last year’s archery bear season. The Game Commission’s preliminary figures peg the archery harvest at 538 bears — this tops 2017’s record archery harvest of more than 493, as well as 2018’s archery harvest of 424.

Leg three — Nov. 23-27 hosted the traditional statewide firearms season. Although a few more bears might be added to the list, as of this writing, hunters had harvested 1,601 bears. The totals by day were: Nov. 23 — 1044, Monday — 333, Tuesday — 142 and Wednesday — 82. This brought the total 2019 harvest to 3,474 bears — already in the top seven of all Pennsylvania bear harvests.

Leg four — The extended bear season started Saturday and runs concurrently with all or part of rifle deer season in 17 wildlife management units. This includes Centre County below I-80, which is part of WMU 4D. Based on the figures from the past two seasons, I would expect the extended season bear harvest to be more than 700 bears. If that occurs, Pennsylvania bear hunters will break the 4,000-bear barrier for only the third time.

As of Saturday evening, the top three bear-producing counties are Lycoming with 261, Clinton with 257 and Tioga with 237 bears. Huntingdon in ninth with 117, while Centre has 110 and Clearfield has 102. Some of those numbers and rankings will surely go up as bears shot during the extended season from the southern two-thirds of Centre and all of Huntingdon County are added this week.

Early start to deer season

If you are waiting for the opening day of deer season Monday, you must be living under a rock. For the first time since 1962, the opening day of rifle deer season — bucks only in Centre County — occurred on the Saturday following Thanksgiving. Holding opening day on the Monday after Thanksgiving had been tradition for my entire hunting career, as well as for most active hunters.

Although surveys of hunters showed that more hunters actually preferred the traditional Monday opener, the game commissioners approved the change to a Saturday opening day in a somewhat contentious split vote. Their hope is that having the opening day of firearms deer season on a Saturday will attract more hunters.

Based on my observations, deer numbers in our area seem to be up. I have seen many nice bucks during the past two months, so I am expecting a high antlered and antlerless deer harvest.

More changes

On Nov. 18, the Pennsylvania Senate passed SB 147, and Gov. Tom Wolf signed it into law Wednesday. Among other things, this bill allows the Pennsylvania Game Commission to add one Sunday for hunting during firearms deer season and one Sunday during archery deer season. One additional Sunday can be added to any season at the commission’s discretion. This time next year, many hunters will likely be out in the woods today for what will be the second day of deer season, instead of spending holiday time with their families.

It’s unknown where the commissioners will place the third Sunday, but most bear hunters probably hope it will be the Sunday during bear season. That’s the option that makes the most sense to me.

Adding a weekend day to any hunting season changes the complexity of species management. Do not be surprised if an added Sunday means a shortened season. Are all of these changes bad or good? Only time will tell.

Mark Nale, who lives in the Bald Eagle Valley, is a member of the Pennsylvania Outdoor Writers Association and can be reached at MarkAngler@aol.com.

This story was originally published December 1, 2019 at 9:43 AM.