What does it take to get someone involved in hunting, and how do you keep them after that initial experience?

A national, Internet-based survey hopes to answer those kinds of questions.

The Wildlife Management Institute will conduct the study this fall. It’s meant to assess current recruitment and retention programs and activities across the country; identify which work better than others; and make that information available to sportsmen, conservation organizations and state wildlife management agencies.

The idea of the study came from the National Shooting Sports Summit, a gathering of experts from state agencies and conservation organizations interested in perpetuating hunting. The hope is that the survey can help boost hunter numbers, which have been in decline in most states for better than a decade.

“The information and data we expect to obtain will provide essential guidance for the enhancement of our hunting heritage,” Wildlife Management Institute president Steve Williams said.

The survey, which will be released by early October, will be sent to state and federal wildlife agencies, sportsmen’s groups and others. Groups will have six weeks to respond.

This survey is just one part of a larger Hunting Heritage Action Plan. A workshop looking at hunting access is another. It’s scheduled for Sept. 30 in Washington, D.C.

To participate in the recruitment and retention survey, contact Matt Dunfee at mdunfee@wildlifemgt.org.

Goose hunting

Once again this year, Westmoreland County parks will be open to goose hunting in September.

The early season, which allows hunters to shoot birds that live in the state year-round rather than migrate, will be Sept. 1-25. The daily limit is eight birds.

Hunting will be allowed from dawn until 9 a.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays beginning this week at Twin Lakes Park and from dawn to 9 a.m. Mondays and Wednesdays beginning this week at Mammoth Park and Northmoreland Park.

Goose hunting at Chestnut Ridge and Bridgeport Dam is allowed Monday-Saturday during all legal shooting hours.

Hunters can use dogs or boats to retrieve geese, but no gasoline motors are permitted. Camouflaged boats may be used as blinds on Chestnut Ridge and Bridgeport lakes, but not at the others.

Many state parks are open to hunting during the early goose season, too. Hunters should contact individual park offices for local starting dates and other details.

This year, hunters will be permitted to take one Canada goose in the Pymatuning zone and up to three geese on Pymatuning State Park Reservoir and an area extending 100 yards inland from the shoreline of the reservoir, excluding the area east of Hartstown Road.

Wasting disease

Chronic wasting disease (CWD), an always-fatal malady that attacks deer, elk, moose and other cervids, has spread to another state.

Wildlife officials in Michigan confirmed the presence of the disease there in a 3-year-old deer being culled from a deer farm.

No one is sure yet if the disease exists elsewhere in Michigan, though five other deer farms are known to have done business with the one where the sick deer was found.

As a result, the state has quarantined all privately owned cervid facilities until testing can be done. The quarantine prevents the movement of any deer, elk or moose, whether dead or alive.

Hunters will be asked to take any deer they kill to check stations so that tissue samples from those animals can be taken, as well.

Bear killed

The black bear population in Butler County continues to increase, according to Game Commission wildlife conservation officer Chip Brunst.

A road-killed bear picked up recently shows just how quickly the animals can grow there — if only they can survive run-ins with humans.

“I had trapped this bear as a 60-pound cub in September of 2006,” Brunst said. “Now, less than two years later, this young male weighed 225 pounds.”

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