You’ve got to hand it to the Pennsylvania Game Commission. They’re not afraid to make changes, even if some of those changes leave the rest of us shaking our heads. The Commissioners gave preliminary approval at their recent January meeting to a number of measures that will alter the way you and I and our friends and relatives hunt.
First, they created a special cottontail rabbit junior hunting season that will coincide with the current junior pheasant hunt. It will occur October 9-16 for licensed hunters aged 12-16 and will not be a part of the Mentored Youth Hunting Program, which is for supervised young hunters under age 12. The purpose is to recruit more youngsters into our hunting ranks, and, having grown up with beagle dogs and rabbit hunting, I agree with this one.
They also voted to continue and enhance the PGC-sponsored “Wild Pheasant Recovery Areas” in three locations: Pike, Somerset and Central Susquehanna. The idea is to restore self-sustaining populations of wild pheasants in Pa., which takes me back to the great pheasant-hunting days of my youth here in Mercer County but also makes me wonder. The PGC and its partners are releasing wild-trapped birds and limiting hunting and dog training in an attempt to establish wild pheasants in the three designated tracts. But I have serious doubts about this program succeeding, unless they restrict hunting pressure long-term and influence farming land use there.
The Commission also voted to close the bobwhite quail season, change the bear and turkey seasons, expand elk hunting opportunities and increase trapper permits and more. But the most intriguing measure of all affects rifle deer season — the most important fortnight of the year for many Pennsylvania hunters — in eight of our 22 Wildlife Management Units. Hunters in those areas will experience an antlered-deer-only restriction the first five days of rifle season (Monday through Friday the week after Thanksgiving) and concurrent antlerless and antlered hunting the final seven days, including both Saturdays. The other 14 WMUs (including our local Unit, 1-A) will continue with concurrent buck and doe hunting all 12 days, as we have for the past several years.
This initiative started last year in four Units scattered across the state, but what’s surprising is that the PGC has so quickly doubled the number of participating WMUs. I thought the 2009 effort was a “pilot program” that would require lots of study and input from hunters in the field. But now they’re adding four more Units without much fanfare or reporting on results.
Maybe this measure is a concession to all those hunters who have opposed the PGC’s policy of deer herd reduction the past 10 years and who criticize what they consider excessive “doe tags” and “doe kills.” Let’s face it, if your goal is to take a doe for the freezer, the first day of the first week is your most likely opportunity, because of the high number of hunters in the woods moving deer. Up at F-Troop Camp, for example, we all stay put up on boulders opening day only, while every other day in rifle season we’re out there driving or still-hunting, moving our own deer.
If you look at a map of the state WMUs (on page 38 of your 2009-2010 Hunting Digest, for example) and mark last year’s four Units, 2-D, 2-G, 4-B and 3-C, you’ll see how scattered they are. But then add the four new Units, 2-E, 2-C, 4-D and 4-E, and the eight Units (with the exception of 3-C) now constitute a continuous mass that forms the center (and much of the mountainous region) of the state. That happens to also be the region that generates many of the “no-deer-in-the-woods” complaints. Maybe the Game Commission is listening and backing off slightly in its deer herd reduction agenda.
If a year from now this initiative hits Unit 2-F, where I hunt up in Warren County, it will not require much of an adjustment from us at F-Troop. Some of our hunters aren’t currently shooting does at all, and most of us don’t take antlerless deer until the second week. It would be kind of nice to have a split season again, similar to but not exactly the same as the separate antlered/antlerless seasons of the past. And I would appreciate knowing that any shooting I’d hear on opening day would all be at legal bucks, not does. I could get used to that experience again.
Good luck out there. And have a great week outdoors.
Don Feigert of Hermitage specializes in writing about the outdoors. His columns appear every two weeks in The Herald and Allied News.
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