State black bear harvest 5th highest
Scouting, a friendly farmer and some luck combined to make a successful black bear hunt for Wayne Van Dyke of Marion Township.
A friend of his found signs of a bear in a corn field in Concord Township, and the farmer happily agreed to let Van Dyke and a group of hunters pursue the crop-eating bruin.
As the sun rose Nov. 20, a Sunday and the opening day of the statewide bear season, Van Dyke and five of his buddies circled the field. Some volunteered to try to walk around to push the bear from cover to the sights of the remaining hunters.
“I was posted up,” Van Dyke said. “I was the lucky guy. It came my way when it walked out.”
The bear he shot turned out to be a female weighing 120 pounds. He said he planning to preserve the hide by having it tanned.
Many bear hunters feel fortunate to harvest one bear, but Van Dyke scored his second bear that day.
He took the first bear to a taxidermist who created a mount in which the bear is standing on a rock with logs and ferns along side.
“It’s in the living room. It’s my centerpiece,” Van Dyke said.
The bear he shot last year was among the 43 killed in Butler County and the 3,659 bears that hunters harvested in the state during the 2021 season.
The total ranks as the state’s fifth-highest harvest ever, and the second-largest recorded since 2011, according to the Pennsylvania Game Commission. The 2020 bear harvest was 3,621.
Hunters took 1,315 bears in the four-day statewide regular season. Another 1,128 bears were taken during the extended season, which for the first time allowed hunters to harvest bears throughout the opening weekend of deer season in some Wildlife Management Units. The archery season produced 680 bears and the muzzleloader and special firearms season added 536 to the total harvest, according to the commission.
The highest recorded harvest occurred in the 2019 season when 4,653 bears were killed. That was the third time since 2005 that the harvest topped 4,000 animals, according to the commission.
A total of 215,219 people, including 205,812 state residents, bought bear licenses in 2021. That number was down slightly from 220,471 in 2020, but it was the second-highest number of bear licenses ever sold in one year. Sales totaled 202,043 in 2019, 174,869 in 2018 and, going back further, 147,728 in 2009.
Bears were taken in 59 of 67 counties and 22 of Pennsylvania’s 23 Wildlife Management Units in the 2021 seasons.
The 43 bears harvested in the county marks an increase of one over the 2020 season.
In Wildlife Management Unit 2D, in which most of Butler County and all or parts of several neighboring counties are located, 206 bears were killed. In the 2020 season, 191 bears were taken in the unit, according to the commission.
The western portion of the county is part of Wildlife Management Unit 1A, where 26 bears — an increase of four over 2020 — were harvested.
Harvests in neighboring counties includes Venango County, 81, Clarion County, 60, Armstrong, 58, Indiana, 12, and Mercer, eight.
The largest bear reported is a 722-pound male taken with a shotgun in the extended season, on Dec. 4, in Franklin County. Other noteworthy harvested bears weighed 681 to 602 pounds.
The heaviest bear ever taken in Pennsylvania was an 875-pounder harvested in 2010 in Middle Smithfield Township, Pike County. Since 1992, seven black bears weighing at least 800 pounds have been lawfully harvested in Pennsylvania hunting seasons.
Counties in the north-central region once again led the state harvest. Lycoming County gave up 212 bears, Potter County ranked second with 180, Pike County third with 167, Tioga County fourth with 166 and Clinton County fifth with 156. Rounding out the top 10 were Bradford County (136), Sullivan County (127), Wayne County (120), Centre County (118), and Huntingdon County (115).
