Can Pennsylvania have an archery bear season⢠That's a question some hunters have been asking in recent months.
A better question, at least in the eyes of the people who manage the state's bears, might be, are we sure we really want one?
Mark Ternent, black bear biologist for the Pennsylvania Game Commission, last week presented a report looking at the pros and cons of holding an archery season specifically for bears. Ternent did not come out and recommend for or against holding such a season.
What he did do was warn that, if such a season is ever held, it would have to be limited to a small number of archers hunting in a small portion of the state. He also said that such a season might impact the state's traditional three-day bear season, hurt the Commission's ability to tag, trap and transfer bears, and even open the Commission and hunters to criticism from animal rights organizations.
Pennsylvania is home to about 15,000 to 16,000 bears spread over 55 counties. Hunters harvest about 20 percent of that population -- about 3,000 animals -- each year. There's room for up to 1,000 additional bears to be harvested without any adverse impacts on the population, Ternent said.
The Commission can't just throw open the doors and let archers go after those bears, however.
Roughly 18 percent of the state's 284,000 archers -- about 51,000 hunters -- already hunt bears. Another 128,000 expressed interest in a bear bow season, according to the Commission's 2002 Game take Survey.
If even 1 percent of all those hunters took a bear, the population would suffer, Ternent wrote.
"Unfortunately, we have almost no data to predict success rates in an archery bear season," Ternent wrote. "Accounts of archers seeing bear while hunting deer are common, and archery bear harvests in neighboring West Virginia, Virginia and New York, where baiting is not allowed, similar to Pennsylvania, are becoming increasingly significant."
In 2003, archers accounted for 14 percent of the bear harvest in New York, for 30 percent in Virginia, and for 45 percent in West Virginia.
For Pennsylvania to have an archery bear season then, it would have to limit participation to 2,000 hunters, limit the season to one week concurrent with the archery deer season and restrict all hunting to wildlife management units 2F, 2G, 3A and 4D, Ternent recommended.
Even at that, there will be hurdles that must be overcome, Ternent said. The Commission -- which only once has met its goal of tagging 600 bears per year for population monitoring purposes -- cannot drug any bear within 30 days of a hunting season, Ternent noted. An archery bear season would further limit the agency's ability to reach that goal, given that 168 bears were tagged after Sept. 1 last year.
The Commission would also have to absorb the additional cost of checking successful bear hunters throughout the season.
If the archery season becomes too successful, the traditional three-day bear hunt may have to be shortened or limited to a certain number of hunters, Ternent added.
"The creation of a new season that is particular to a new segment of the hunting population will undoubtedly be controversial to some," Ternent wrote.
Creating an archery season might also require the Commission to defend itself against concerns that "archery bear hunting will increase wounding losses or illegal baiting," he added.
