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Outdoors

Game lands tours are scheduled

Again this October, the Pennsylvania Game Commission will be offering a series of nine self-guided driving tours on selected state game lands throughout the state. The agency suspended these popular autumn tours in 2016 for financial reasons but put them back in place last fall. All tours are free and will be held regardless of the weather. Only vehicles licensed for travel on public roads are permitted on the tours. I have taken several of these tours in past years and always found them to be a special opportunity to get well into the interior of some of these large game-lands ...

Scandal rocks fishing tournament

By Mark Gillispie The Associated Press CLEVELAND — The county prosecutor’s office in Cleveland has opened an investigation into an apparent cheating scandal during a lucrative walleye fishing tournament on Lake Erie last week. A video posted to Twitter shows Jason Fischer, tournament director for the Lake Erie Walleye Trail, cutting open the winning catch of five walleye on Friday and finding lead weights and prepared fish filets inside them. The winning anglers, Jacob Runyan, of Broadview Heights, Ohio, and Chase Cominsky, of Hermitage, Pennsylvania, were immediately ...

Pa’s elk herd thrills hunters and others

The restoration of elk in Pennsylvania represents a great conservation success story. Native elk were found throughout Pennsylvania in the early 19th century but were all but eliminated from the state by the late 1800s, except for a small population in the area around Elk County. The Pennsylvania Game Commission began an elk restoration program in 1913 by releasing animals obtained from Yellowstone National Park, South Dakota and a private preserve in Pennsylvania. This effort continued until 1926 with 177 elk being transplanted into the central, northeastern and northcentral regions ...

Archery season always a fun time

Archery season opens Oct. 1 in this area, an exciting time to be in the woods. My buddy, Joanie Haidle, was out checking her trail cams and came upon one that had been totally ripped off the tree. It was bent and twisted, and teeth marks peppered the outside of it. She spent a couple of hours on hands and knees looking for the camera card but never found it and wondered if it ended up in the bear’s stomach. Perhaps there is a black bear with indigestion running around out there. That could add to the fun out there this archery/turkey season. We shall see. Archers are still ...

Sept. squirrel season is a new tradition

The opening days of the mourning dove and early Canada goose seasons on Sept. 1 are well-established traditions in Pennsylvania. The start of the statewide squirrel last weekend on Saturday, Sept. 10, however, is somewhat of a new tradition for early-season hunting here in Pennsylvania. It is the third year of the squirrel season starting in early September rather than the long-established mid-October opener. When the Pennsylvania Game Commission approved this change for the fall of 2020, the rationale for it was to provide increased hunting opportunities. And moving the season up by ...

Sympathies appreciated as hunting life goes on

Ah, September is here! First I sincerely want to thank everyone for your calls and cards during the recent loss of my son, Mark. He was my only child, my best hunting buddy and a great son. I know I will never get over it but life must go on and archery season is just around the corner. You’ll soon see lots of camouflage clothes hanging outside to air all the human smells out of them. Hay bales will appear in back yards for archery practice sessions, and sporting good stores will have huge upticks in sales of broadheads, arrows, boots, clothes and smelly cover scents and scents ...