The PA Game Commission announced its Sunday hunting dates for 2020 recently.

The PGC selected Nov. 15 in the deer archery season as its first Sunday hunting date. This was followed by Nov. 22 for a Sunday bear hunting which will stretch the bear firearms season from Saturday through Tuesday across the state.

The final Sunday hunting date was set for Nov. 29 in the deer rifle season. This date will allow concurrent hunting for 14 days in deer firearms season.

All of these changes push back the Fall turkey late season from Wednesday through Friday before the deer season starts on Nov. 25 through Nov. 28.

There will be some type of hunting activity everyday for a month. That’s a lot of hunting and camp owners should be able to get a lot of use out of their getaways!

Wildlife patches

The new Working for Wildlife Patches are being sold for this year, this years’ patch features a bald eagle and looks pretty good. The patches have been around since the early 1980’s with the earliest patches including the prototype flying squirrel very collectible and costly I might add.

Right now, you can get them at the PGC for $5.66 plus postage, but they can run up to $400 on the secondary market. The prices were even higher in the secondary market until some of the patches were being reproduced and people became guarded against buying fake knockoffs.

As the older dated patches become sold out, the collectors are hanging on to their original verified patches. Each of the yearly patches also have matching artwork that can be purchased at the Outdoor Shop on the PGC website.

Purple trees are in

Purple trees are in for 2020 as the PGC is allowing landowners to paint their property lines to keep out uninvited hunting guests. The PGC game wardens are now going to enforce trespassing laws on posted properties.

The Sunday hunting laws have placed extra emphasis on the protection of private landowners who either do not want hunting on Sundays or those who will be limiting hunting by permission only. Hunters will be required to have signed permission to be hunting on private properties in the upcoming hunting season.

Deer hunters who wound a deer will need prior permission to enter a property to recover their deer. The use of tracking dogs will be permitted as long as the dog is on a leash and that you do have permission to be on the property that the deer travels on to escape the hunter.

Deer tracking dogs

Deer tracking dogs are fairly new to PA and the number of trackers is still fairly small. One group that is in action now is the UnitedBloodTrackers.org who have trackers available in our hunting areas.

The PGC does not have any testing requirements for trackers and only require that they have a hunting license for the game that they are tracking and a dog. Trackers are used for deer, elk and bears and have a 50-50 chance of finding your animal.

Hunters should be aware that there may be a fee for the services that they provide even if the game is not recovered. Do your homework and ask a lot of questions of their experience and success rates. Of course, the best preparation takes place before the shot is taken!

Keep rifles clean

I was going over all of my sporting arms this week and I was surprised to see a slight bit of surface rust on one of my favorite rifles. It was quickly wiped down and all was well, but it made me take a look at all of my pieces to make sure that they were all clean and lightly oiled for the off season.

I had purchased a Thompson/Center ProHunter FX muzzleloader for the early deer and bear muzzleloader season this past year. One of the things that I liked about this .50 cal. was that it had an easy access breech cleanout.

Keeping your barrel clean on any black powder rifle is very important as the powder residue is very corrosive to the rifling. Well, in an effort to clean the barrel, I found that my easy access breech cleanout had seized up. It would not turn by hand and caused me to disassemble part of the scope system to get remove the breech plug.

Nevertheless, I was persistent and able to clean everything up and especially we focused on the plug! My first warning should have been the word easy, as I have found that nothing is as easy as they say it should be!

Until we meet again, keep those firearms cleaned up and don’t count on anything being too easy. Don’t forget to check out the changes in your hunting regulations digest and get up to date for the 2020-2021 hunting season.

Jay Hewitt is an outdoors columnist for the Butler Eagle