Big turnout expected as Pa. firearms season for black bear set to start

With 1,450 black bears already harvested by hunters in seasons earlier this fall, Pennsylvania’s firearms season on the large mammals opens a half-hour before sunrise on Saturday.

The firearms season will continue daily through a half-hour after sunset on Tuesday. Daily hunting hours run from a half-hour before sunrise to a half-hour after sunset.

Each hunter with a bear license, which is purchased in addition to the general hunting license, is permitted to shoot one bear.

At this point last year, hunters had killed 1,186 bears. In all bear-hunting seasons in 2021-22, hunters harvested 3,659 bears, which ranks as Pennsylvania’s No. 5 largest bear harvest behind 2019, with a harvest of 4,653; 2011, harvest of 4,350; 2005, harvest of 4,162; and 2015, harvest of 3,748. The other harvests in the top 10 were 3,632 in 2012, 3,621 in 2020, 3,619 in 2021, 3,530 in 2016, and 3,512 in 2009.

The bear harvest so far this year includes seven bruins taken during the Sept. 17 to Nov. 25 early archery season in the southwestern and southeastern corners of the state and 1,443 shot during the Oct. 15 to Nov. 5 statewide archery season and the Oct. 20 to Oct. 22 special firearms season.

The top harvest counties so far this year are Potter, with 67 reported bears killed; Clinton, 60; Lycoming, 60; Tioga, 59; Pike, 56; Carbon, 48; Luzerne, 45; Bradford, 43; Venango, 40; and Monroe, 36.

The largest bruins to date and the counties where they were harvested are 681 pounds, Luzerne; 590, Potter; 588, Potter; 544, Carbon; 544, Armstrong; 544, Wayne; 539, Lycoming; 423, Luzerne; 522, Pike; and 522, Pike.

More than 200,000 hunters are expected to pursue bears in Pennsylvania this year.

A total of 215,219 people bought a bear license in 2021, which was close to 2020′s record sales of 220,471.

Only the white-tailed deer draws more hunters into the Pennsylvania woods each fall and winter, and only the first day of the firearms season for deer — Nov. 26 this year — sees a larger one-day turnout than the first day of the firearms season for bear.

“Pennsylvania continues to offer tremendous bear hunting,” said Emily Carrollo, the Pennsylvania Game Commission’s black bear biologist. “We’ve got lots of bears, and lots of big ones, and hunters can pick and choose when and how they want to pursue them. If there’s ever been a great time to be a Pennsylvania bear hunter, this is it, right now.”

That’s not to say that every bear hunter who hits the woods will fill his tag. Success rates for bear hunters still hover around 3 percent.

Earlier this year, before any bear hunting seasons in the 2022-23 hunting license year, Carrollo estimated the Pennsylvania bear population at 15,666, down from an estimated 16,000 in 2021.

While it was the second straight year of a drop in the population estimate, she said “at a healthy population of almost 16,000 bears, I’m not worried about it at this point.”

Pennsylvania has seen similar declines in bear numbers in two other recent periods — 2005 to 2007 and 2010 to 2012 — both after years of high bear harvests by hunters.

“There is potentially an effect of having that really high harvest and noticing those decreases in the following two years, which follows the life history of reproductive strategy for black bears,” Carrollo said.

“I’m not predicting anything for the future, but that is something for us to be aware of and keep track of moving forward.”

She noted that bear harvest rates have not changed much over the past 20 years, standing at about 20 percent of the state’s bear population each year. But in each of the past three years they’ve been higher, about 22 percent, and in 2021 was about 23 percent.

Carrollo pointed to the harvest rate of female bears as being of more concern and warranting a newly launched research project. While the harvest rate of females was about 13 percent from 2010-2018, it is now averaging about 22 percent.

“If we need to make changes, we will be able to make them accordingly and in an appropriate amount of time,” she said. “In addition to that, over the last 40 years we’ve done an incredible job as an agency increasing our black bear population.

“In the simplest terms, we know the recipe to make more bears here in Pennsylvania. If it ever got to that point, which I am not concerned about whatsoever, we know how to change things around and adjust for the appropriate bear seasons to make more bears.”

Pennsylvania’s bear population has grown immensely over the past half-century. Until 1983, when the harvest was 1,529, hunters had never killed more than a thousand bruins in a year. The harvest topped 2,000 for the first time in 1989, when it reached 2,213. The first 3,000-plus year was 2000, which saw 3,075 bears killed.

For several years, until last year, the state’s bruin population was estimated at 20,000.