The Pennsylvania black bear season officially opens this weekend for all archers and muzzleloader hunters that possess a current PA bear license in addition to their 2020-21 general hunting license.

The bear license allows hunters to participate in the bear archery and bear muzzleloader seasons without needing an archery or muzzleloader license for these two particular seasons. In addition to these seasons, there is a special firearms season for senior hunters statewide Oct. 22-24 that allows regular centerfire rifles.

Black bears are considered one of the major game animals in Pennsylvania, along with the whitetail deer, eastern wild turkey, and elk. Many hunters have sought the elusive black bear in the northern tier counties of Pennsylvania in years past, but the population of 20,000 black bears has expanded throughout the commonwealth.

Butler County has had successful hunters in our own county for many years now, and the sighting of bears in our communities is more common than you may think.

This wasn’t always the case in all of Pennsylvania — let alone Butler County — as the bear population was pretty small as recently as the 1970s. The PA Game Commission estimated that the bear population in those days was around 2,500 animals and about 200,000 bear hunters.

In those days, there were one-day and two-day seasons and an actual closed season in 1970. In 1976, there was an extremely high harvest of 605 bears in about a dozen counties in the northeast and north central counties. With about a third of the bear population harvested, the PGC became very alarmed and made some significant changes, closing bear hunting in both 1977 and 1978.

A new kid out of Penn State joined the PGC in 1974 and had some radical ideas backed by science that was providing a cautious and thoughtful scientific approach to study the bear population. The closing of hunting for two years and then having limited hunting areas afterwards, a new statewide bear license, and bear check stations all had a positive impact on Pennsylvania’s black bears.

Gary Alt knew that he had the start of having the tools in place to protect the bears from being overharvested and set the stage for an era of population and range expansion.

Alt’s studies gave Pennsylvanians a new fountain of knowledge about black bear habits and helped us understand the ways of the bear population. He found that a male bear had a 12.1-mile range while females averaged about 5.2 miles.

The bear ranges fluctuated with bear density, habitat quality and food sources.

About this time, the PGC addressed a law on the books since 1925 on the harvesting of cub bears.

Alt reported that some adult female bears were smaller than some large 140-pound cub bears and that the only way to truly tell was by measuring canine teeth to see if it was more than a half-inch long. Agreeing with Alt, the PGC commissioners voted to abolish the cub law during the one-day 1980 bear season.

Pennsylvania had a record harvest in the 2019 bear season of 4,653 bears with the largest bear weighing in at 813 pounds, a male bear in Monroe County. Bears were harvested in 58 of Pennsylvania’s 67 counties.

The opportunity to harvest a black bear in Pennsylvania is at its peak for hunters in this modern era if you do a little homework. The PGC provides hunter harvest maps of where the most bears are found each year. There are traditional areas for bear hunting and there are new expanded areas as well.

Talk to the local regional Game Commission offices to get some maps and locations that have good bear populations. Do some field scouting for food sources which appear to be strong with both tree mast and apples this year. Bears are opportunists and will feed near agricultural areas causing quite an amount of damage, and you may find a farmer who will welcome bear hunters.

Remember, wear fluorescent orange, carry your licenses, and have a plan to get help bringing your bear out of the woods and to the game check station (in Franklin, for our area).

Take some time to learn how to field dress a bear as it is a bigger process than you think and is recommended to be done as soon as possible. Above all, be safe and enjoy the great outdoors in the Pennsylvania bear woods!

Jay Hewitt is an outdoors columnist for the Butler Eagle.