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The regular statewide bear season begins Saturday and continues through Tuesday, and includes Sunday. This four-day event continues to grow in popularity and now ranks second only to deer season in the number of hunters participating.
Last year, 215,219 bear licenses were sold in Pennsylvania, just a few thousand fewer than the all-time sales record of 220,471 in 2020. That is just one reason why we are currently enjoying what could be considered the "Golden Age" of bear hunting in Pennsylvania.
Another reason is several extra bear-hunting opportunities earlier in the fall. The statewide archery bear season this year ran from Oct. 15 to Nov. 5. The muzzleloader bear season was held from Oct. 15 to 22. A special hunt from Oct. 20 to 22 allowed junior and senior license holders, mentored hunters ages 16 and under, active-duty military and certain disabled persons' permit holders to hunt bears with a firearm. The extended bear season allows licensed bear hunters to harvest a bear during all or part of the regular deer season. In WMUs 1B, 2C, 3A, 3B, 3C, 3D, 4A, 4B, 4C, 4D, 4E and 5A, the extended bear season runs from Nov. 26 to Dec. 3; in WMUs 2B, 5B, 5C and 5D, the extended bear season runs through the entire deer season, from Nov. 26 to Dec. 10.
All those extra days of hunting opportunities have resulted in impressive bear harvest numbers in recent years. The all-time best bear season was in 2019 when 4,653 bears were taken. The second-best year was 2011 when 4,350 bears were taken. Last year was the fifth-best harvest with 3,650 bears taken in 59 of the state's 67 counties. In 2021, a total of 1,208 bears were taken in the archery, muzzleloader and special firearms seasons, 1,314 bears in the regular season and 1.127 bears in the extended season. According to preliminary harvest numbers for the 2022 archery, muzzleloader and special firearms bear seasons posted on the Game Commission website, hunters have already taken 1,450 bears,
Pennsylvania bear hunters bag some world-class trophy black bears each season, The heaviest bear ever taken in Pennsylvania was an 875-pounder in 2010 in Pike County. Since 1992, seven black bears weighing at least 800 pounds have been lawfully harvested in Pennsylvania. The largest bear harvested last season was a 722-pounder taken in Franklin County, the only bear to top 700 pounds last year. But if the preliminary results of the early season hunts are any indication this could be a banner year for big bears with three animals over 700 pounds checked in so far: a 755 -pounder and a 705-pounder, both from Monroe County, and a 747-pounder from Lycoming County. Several counties in our region have also produced big bears during the early bear seasons. Bedford and Clearfield both produced a 681-pound bear, along with a 610-pounder from Centre County.
Goodbye … so long
With Senate Bill 431 being signed into law earlier this month, Pennsylvania hunters will finally not have to deal with the needlessly complicated process of purchasing doe licenses by mailing special pink envelopes to a county treasurer's office.
The requirement for county treasurers to be the only licensing agents allowed to issue doe licenses goes back generations and was a matter of state law. That is why it took a long-overdue act of the state legislature to change that system.
For many years, doe licenses were allocated on a county-by-county basis, and hunters were required to send their doe license application to the treasurer of the county in which they desired to hunt. Allocations for most counties then were meager compared to today, so demand always far exceeded the supply, and most hunters' license applications were returned unfulfilled. And those of us old enough to remember those times can probably recall some of the alleged "irregularities" regarding the distribution of licenses that occurred in some counties back then.
About 20 years ago, the Game Commission overhauled deer management statewide, one of the first changes was to divide the state into more than 20 Wildlife Management Units. Doe license allocations became based on individual WMUs rather than counties and essentially rendered the county treasurer system obsolete, if it ever really had any merit to begin with. But without a change to state law, all doe licenses still had to be applied to and issued by a county treasurer, although hunters were permitted to apply to any county treasurer for a license to hunt in any WMU.
With the recent change to the law, hunters should now have the opportunity to purchase doe licenses through the HuntFishPA automated licensing service either online or in person from issuing agents the same way as all other hunting licenses and permits are purchased. The Game Commission has said it will inform hunters before the start of the next license year on the process of applying for a doe license under the new system. I'm sure no one will miss those silly pink envelopes.