PA Game Commission

DEER-BAITING PERMITS TO CONTINUE IN SOUTHEASTERN COUNTIES

July 9, 2017 by BCSCL Staff

Board votes to keep baiting as an option in Southeast Special Regulations Area.

The Pennsylvania Board of Game Commissioners today ensured deer hunters in the Southeast Special Regulations Area will continue to have the option to apply for permits to use mechanical feeders to dispense bait at hunting locations on private property.

The board first voted to create deer-attractant permits in 2014, but attached to the measure a sunset clause that would force the board to revisit the issue in 2017. The board today gave final approval to a measure that removes the sunset clause to allow the permits to continue being issued.

06/26/2017 HIGHLIGHTS FROM TODAY’S COMMISSIONERS MEETING

Courtesy of Pennsylvania Game Commission

AMENDMENT ADDRESSES SPECIAL REGULATIONS AREAS FOR AIR GUNS AND SOME SEMIAUTOMATIC RIFLES

July 9, 2017 by BCSCL Staff

Air guns, some semiautomatic rifles could become lawful hunting arms within Special Regulations Areas.

When the Pennsylvania Game Commission in April approved the use of semiautomatic rifles and air guns for hunting small game and furbearers, the provision could not be extended to the state’s Special Regulations Areas, which are covered under a separate section of the law.

But a measure preliminarily approved today by the Pennsylvania Board of Game Commissioners would allow hunters and trappers within Special Regulations Areas also to use semiautomatic rifles and air guns. If the measure is adopted at the Sept. 26 meeting, it likely would take effect sometime in November or December.

06/26/2017 HIGHLIGHTS FROM TODAY’S COMMISSIONERS MEETING

Courtesy of Pennsylvania Game Commission

THREE ELECTRONIC DEVICES COULD BE APPROVED FOR HUNTING

July 9, 2017 by BCSCL Staff

It’s unlawful to hunt with electronic devices unless they’re permitted by exception.

If the measure is adopted, hunters would be able to use electronic decoys in hunting waterfowl; electronically heated scent or lure dispensers; and electronic devices that distribute ozone gas for scent-control purposes.

The measure is scheduled to be brought back to the September meeting for a final vote. The board indicated it will consider adding electronic mourning-dove decoys to the list when it’s brought up for a final vote.

06/26/2017 HIGHLIGHTS FROM TODAY’S COMMISSIONERS MEETING

Courtesy of Pennsylvania Game Commission

Antlerless Deer Applications 2017 – 2018

July 6, 2017 by BCSCL Staff

Application Schedule

July 10: Residents

July 17: Nonresidents

Aug. 7: Unsold, 1st round

Aug. 21: Unsold, 2nd round

Aug. 28: Over-the-counter sales for WMUs 2B, 5C & 5D

Oct. 2: Over-the-counter sales for all other WMUs

Wildlife Management Units (WMUs)

On the application form, the hunter must enter at least one Wildlife Management Unit (WMU) preference where he or she desires to hunt. The hunter may select up to three WMU preferences on the form. If the first WMU is sold out, the county treasurer will issue the second, or if necessary, the third based on license availability. A guide to WMUs, including boundary maps is found in the 2017-18 Hunting & Trapping Digest.

County Treasurers

Hunters can apply by mailing applications to any county treasurer with the addresses provided in the Digest. The zipcodes for Bedford and Berks counties were listed incorrectly on some handouts. Be sure to use 15522-1713 and 19601-4318 respectively.

Official Envelope

All antlerless deer license applications must be mailed in the official pink envelope. You should have received official envelopes with your license purchase. If you did not receive these envelopes, please contact us at pgccomments@pa.gov or 717-787-4250.

Application Status

You can check to see if you were awarded an antlerless deer license by visiting the Game Commission’s website, clicking “Buy Your License”, then “Buy A License Online.” Select the first option, which includes checking application status.

Do Not Wait

Applications that are received before the dates listed above will be returned. Hunters are encouraged to apply as soon as permissible for the best chance of receiving the Wildlife Management Unit of choice. Last year, the antlerless deer license allocations in each WMU were exhausted. Some WMUs sell out quickly. Check the date that your preferred WMU sold out last year.

Availability

Check on the remaining availability of antlerless deer licenses throughout the application period by visiting this page.

Note that prior to the first round of antlerless deer license sales, qualified landowner antlerless deer license sales will be reflected in the number of available licenses for each unit.

2017 – 2018 Furtaker Licenses On Sale

July 5, 2017 by BCSCL Staff

Pennsylvania hunting and furtaker licenses are on sale!

Buy your license at any issuing agent or online.

Additional Opportunities

Apply for the Pennsylvania Elk Drawing and DMAP permits through the Outdoor Shop.

License Packet Information

In addition to a 2017-18 hunting/furtaker license buyers will receive:

– a “pocket-guide”
– harvest report cards
– antlerless license applications
– an antlerless license application schedule
– a list of County Treasurer addresses
– two pink antlerless deer application envelopes

The “pocket-guide” contains general hunting regulations, hunting hours, fluorescent orange requirements, a map of the Wildlife Management Units, and season dates and bag limits.

Full 2017-18 Pennsylvania Hunting & Trapping Digest

License buyers who wish to view the full digest can do so online, or they can opt to purchase a printed digest for $6. Digests will be sold over-the-counter at Game Commission Region Offices and Harrisburg Headquarters. When purchased elsewhere, the digests will be mailed directly to license buyers.

NEW Pheasant Stamp

Pheasant permits are required for all adult and senior hunters, including senior lifetime license buyers, who pursue or harvest pheasants. Junior hunters do not need a pheasant permit to hunt or harvest pheasants. Each pheasant permit costs $26.90, and the permit is required in addition to a general hunting license.

Fiscal Responsibility

By no longer giving free digests to all license buyers, the Game Commission will save significantly on the cost of printing and mailing hundreds of thousands of digests.

By creating a pheasant permit, the Game Commission has established a mechanism to help fund the pheasant program – giving hunters a chance to help sustain the program rather than see it vanish.

Game Commission Executive Director Bryan Burhans explained these decisions are motivated by the agency’s financial situation, which already has caused the Game Commission to eliminate programs and reduce personnel.

“These kinds of reductions in services are necessary as the Game Commission approaches nearly two decades without an increase in the cost of a general hunting or furtaker license,” Burhans said.

Information Courtesy of Email Updates from Pennsylvania Game Commission www.pgc.pa.gov

Hunting Licenses Go On Sale June 19th

July 5, 2017 by BCSCL Staff

06/08/2017

HUNTING LICENSES TO GO ON SALE JUNE 19

Pennsylvania hunters and trappers soon will be lining up to purchase their 2017-18 licenses, and they need to be aware of some important changes implemented since this time last year.

Hunting licenses for 2017-18 go on sale June 19. The licenses become valid July 1 and, after that date, all who hunt, trap or who want to apply for an antlerless deer license must have an up-to-date 2017-18 license to do so.

One noticeable change for 2017-18 license buyers is that the full regulations digest typically given out when licenses are purchased is not being provided for free this year.

Instead, all license buyers will receive a complimentary “pocket-guide” that contains general hunting regulations, hunting hours, fluorescent orange requirements, a map of the Wildlife Management Units, and season dates and bag limits.

License buyers who wish to view the full digest can do so online at the www.pgc.pa.gov, or they can opt to purchase a printed digest for $6. Digests will be sold over-the-counter at Game Commission Region Offices and Harrisburg Headquarters. When purchased elsewhere, the digests will be mailed directly to license buyers.

By no longer giving free digests to all license buyers, the Game Commission will save significantly on the cost of printing and mailing hundreds of thousands of digests.

Game Commission Executive Director Bryan Burhans explained this decision is being motivated by the agency’s financial situation, which already has caused the Game Commission to eliminate programs and reduce personnel.

“These kinds of reductions in services are necessary as the Game Commission approaches nearly two decades without an increase in the cost of a general hunting or furtaker license,” Burhans said.

Unlike most state agencies, the Game Commission doesn’t get a share of tax money from the state’s general fund. Instead, funding comes primarily from the sale of licenses, the fees for which are set by the General Assembly.

A challenging fiscal climate also is behind another significant change in 2017-18 – the requirement for all adult and senior pheasant hunters to purchase a permit.

In recent decades, pheasant hunting in Pennsylvania has been possible only through the release of farm-raised pheasants, and the Game Commission’s pheasant propagation program annually has raised and released about 200,000 pheasants or more for hunting statewide. While the program is a popular one, it doesn’t come cheap, costing about $4.7 million annually in recent years.

Steps have been taken to curtail the cost of the program. The Game Commission last year closed two of its four pheasant farms, and the statewide pheasant allocation for 2017-18 has been reduced to 170,000.

By creating a pheasant permit, the Game Commission has established a mechanism to help fund the pheasant program – giving hunters a chance to help sustain the program rather than see it vanish.

General hunting licenses and furtaker licenses each continue to cost $20.90 for Pennsylvania residents and $101.90 for nonresidents.

Resident senior hunters and furtakers, ages 65 and older, can purchase one-year licenses for $13.90, or lifetime licenses for $51.90. For $101.90, resident seniors can purchase lifetime combination licenses that afford them hunting and furtaking privileges. Like other hunters and trappers, seniors still need to purchase archery licenses before participating in the archery deer season, bear licenses to pursue bruins, and permits to harvest pheasants, bobcats, fishers or river otters.

A complete list of licensing requirements can be found at www.pgc.pa.gov.

Burhans thanked hunters and trappers for their enduring support of Pennsylvania wildlife through their annual license purchases.

“At any price, the opportunity to spend days afield in Penn’s Woods, carrying on our hunting and trapping heritage, is invaluable,” Burhans said. “Our pheasant hunters are a great example of that. When we first proposed creation of a pheasant permit, many of them stepped up to say they’d gladly pay $50 or a $100 for their permits that would keep the propagation program going and sustain the opportunity to hunt pheasants in Pennsylvania.

“For more than a century, hunters and trappers have funded the conservation of all the Commonwealth’s wildlife, for all Pennsylvanians, and we owe them a debt of gratitude,” Burhans said. “Their contribution not only has produced some of the best deer, bear and turkey hunting in the nation, it’s helped to create and maintain healthy habitat and preserve a diversity of wildlife that can be enjoyed by all statewide.”

Information Courtesy of Email Updates from Pennsylvania Game Commission www.pgc.pa.gov

Game Commission Announces Updated CWD Response

July 5, 2017 by BCSCL Staff

06/14/2017

GAME COMMISSION ANNOUNCES UPDATED CWD RESPONSE

The Pennsylvania Game Commission today announced regulation changes to address the increasing threat that chronic wasting disease (CWD) presents to the state’s deer and elk.

Disease Management Area 2 will be expanded significantly eastward, increasing its area from 2,846 square miles to 4,095 square miles. Within DMA 2, two new Deer Management Assistance Program (DMAP) units have been created to focus hunter effort in areas where multiple CWD-positive deer have been found. And at the same time, the Game Commission has dissolved DMA 1 in York and Adams counties.

DMA 2 in southcentral Pennsylvania is the only area of the state where CWD, which always is fatal to deer and elk, has been detected in free-ranging deer.

The expansion of DMA 2 is in response to CWD expanding within the DMA, and new detections of CWD-positive deer at captive facilities.

Twenty-five free-ranging deer tested positive for CWD in 2016. From 2012 to 2015, a total of 22 free-ranging CWD-positive deer were detected in DMA 2.

Since this time last year, the disease also has been detected on three additional captive deer facilities, one each in Bedford, Franklin and Fulton counties. The Bedford and Fulton facilities are within the previous DMA 2 boundary, but the Franklin County facility is 25 miles east of the previous DMA 2 boundary.

In recent years, the Game Commission has allocated and issued permits that could be used to hunt antlerless deer anywhere within Disease Management Area 2.

Those permits won’t be issued this year, but hunters can obtain up to two permits each to take antlerless deer on the two newly created DMAP units within DMA 2.

Although the function will be similar, Game Commission Executive Director Bryan Burhans said the shift to using DMAP permits will target areas where multiple CWD-positive deer have been found.

Like the other changes being made, it is aimed at managing the disease in the most effective and efficient way possible.

“The fight against CWD isn’t an easy one, but with cooperation from hunters, landowners, partner agencies and Pennsylvania residents, we hope to move forward with efforts to minimize the impacts of this serious disease,” Burhans said.

The full news release contains more updated CWD response information under these sections:
-DMA 2 Expands
-DMAP as a CWD Control
-DMA 1 Dissolved

Information Courtesy of Email Updates from Pennsylvania Game Commission www.pgc.pa.gov

Mount From Massive, Illegally Killed Elk Finds New Home

July 5, 2017 by BCSCL Staff

05/23/2017

MOUNT FROM MASSIVE, ILLEGALLY KILLED ELK FINDS NEW HOME

After touring the country as part of a traveling display, the mount made from a giant, illegally killed Pennsylvania bull elk has come home to Clearfield County.

Representatives from the Pennsylvania Game Commission and Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation at a recent ceremony in Clearfield, Pa. presented the mount of the now-famous “Historic Pennsylvania Poaching Bull” to Clearfield County District Attorney William A. Shaw Jr., who prosecuted the poachers responsible for the unlawful killing.

Because of the historic significance of the elk, Shaw made arrangements for the trophy to be on permanent display at the Clearfield County Historical Society, where it is available for public viewing.

Killed unlawfully in a 2014 poaching spree near Karthaus, Pa., the bull is one of the largest on record in Pennsylvania. Its official Boone & Crockett measurements of 432 7/8 inches would rank as Pennsylvania’s third-largest bull elk ever, had it been lawfully harvested.

The mount is so big, in fact, the historical society had to do some remodeling before putting the bull on display, said the organization’s vice president Susan Williams.

“We completely remodeled a room to house it, and we have a number of artifacts of historic importance on display alongside it,” Williams said.

The 10- by 9-point bull was mounted courtesy of the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, which last year included the mount in its traveling Great Elk Tour display, which made 24 stops in 20 states. In Pennsylvania, the tour stopped at the Great American Outdoor Show in Harrisburg in February 2016, and in Benezette, Elk County, at the height of the September bugling season.

Information Courtesy of Email Updates from Pennsylvania Game Commission www.pgc.pa.gov

Agencies Partner For Troubled Game Birds

July 5, 2017 by BCSCL Staff

05/24/2017

AGENCIES PARTNER FOR TROUBLED GAME BIRDS

A state-agency partnership is creating more habitat for two troubled game birds and other wildlife species that rely on young forest.

Since 2011, the Pennsylvania Game Commission and the state Department of Conservation and Natural Resources have teamed to restore thousands of acres of idle, difficult-to-manage habitat for ruffed grouse and woodcock on state forests.

The partnership, spearheaded by DCNR’s Emily Just, an ecologist with the Bureau of Forestry, and Lisa Williams, a Game Commission game birds biologist, has been helping state forests and parks personnel write plans to remedy what ails now marginal habitats that once supported substantial populations of the ol’ ruff and timberdoodles. Both depend on young forests, which have been declining in Pennsylvania for some time. Grouse covet young upland forest – preferably with some adjacent stands of more mature trees; woodcock need young forest and shrubby thickets in soggy lowlands that offers their favorite food, worms.

“Pennsylvania is currently at a 50-year-low for this critical habitat,” Williams explained. “The decline of young forest has been dramatic.”

Pennsylvania lost about 30 percent of its young forest between 1980 and 2005, and declines continue, Williams said. Just 5 percent of Pennsylvania forests are young – up to 19 years old, according to 2014 forest inventory data collected by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service.

Reverting farm fields and bottomland, the loss of young forestland to tree maturation and land-use changes have hurt these popular native game birds. Sinking with their populations are somewhat obscure songbirds, like golden-winged and prairie warblers, the yellow-breasted chat and brown thrasher, as well as the more recognizable whip-poor-wills, box turtles and snowshoe hares.

Although grouse mortality also is tied to West Nile virus, habitat is the key to keeping the state bird abundant in Penn’s Woods. It’s a conclusion resource managers back.

Learn more about the new interagency habitat prescription service.

Information Courtesy of Email Updates from Pennsylvania Game Commission www.pgc.pa.gov

SPRINGTIME ALERT – DO NOT DISTURB YOUNG WILDLIFE

June 1, 2017 by BCSCL Staff

05/19/2017

Whether in their backyards or high on a mountain, it’s almost certain Pennsylvanians will encounter young wildlife this time of year.

While some young animals might appear to be abandoned, usually they are not. It’s likely their mothers are watching over them from somewhere nearby.

So when encountering young deer, birds, raccoons or other young wildlife, the best thing people can do is leave the animals alone.

“Most people want to do what they can to help wildlife, and when they see a young animal that appears to be abandoned, they want to intervene,” said Wayne Laroche, the Game Commission wildlife management director. “What they don’t realize is that, in all likelihood, they’re doing more harm than good.

“Those young animals probably aren’t abandoned at all, meaning that anyone stepping in to try to help not only is taking that youngster away from its mother, but also destroying its chances to grow up as it was intended,” he said.

Adult animals often leave their young while they forage for food, but they don’t go far and they do return. Wildlife also often relies on a natural defensive tactic called the “hider strategy,” where young animals will remain motionless and “hide” in surrounding cover while adults draw the attention of potential predators or other intruders away from their young.

Deer employ this strategy, and deer fawns sometimes are assumed to be abandoned when, in fact, their mothers are nearby.

The Game Commission urges Pennsylvanians to resist the urge to interfere with young wildlife or remove any wild animal from its natural setting. Read the rest of the Springtime Alert.

Courtesy of PA Game Commission