Popular archery season drawing to a close
For the last month, archers have been out in their tree stands and blinds, waiting for the opportune moment to harvest a doe or prized buck.
It’s a season that’s become increasingly popular across the state for a number of reasons.
“Archery season continues to grow,” said Patrick Snickles, State Game Warden supervisor and Information and Education specialist with the Pennsylvania Game Commission. “A lot of people harvest their deer in archery season any more.”
“The regular rifle season for deer really appears to be diminished. Not saying people don’t hunt it; they certainly do. But a lot of people hunt archery anymore,” he added.
In Pennsylvania, archery season opened statewide on Sept. 29.
It’ll wrap up this weekend — Nov. 12 — and come back for two weeks after Christmas.
And as always, intermixed with this year’s archery season was a week of early muzzleloader from Oct. 13-20.
“A lot of people have harvested their deer and are out of the woods by the time rifle season is here,” Snickles said. In PA, rifle season opens Nov. 26 and runs for a week.
He attributed the growing popularity to a couple things — first of which is nicer weather, noting that deer season can have questionable weather.
“And, given the choice, I’d rather be hunting deer in the first or second week of October than the first week of December,” he added.
Remembering that daylight savings time (DST) begins this weekend, Snickles also noted that the first month of archery was ideal for people who worked during the day and wanted to come home and hunt.
When clocks change and dusk quickly approaches, that’s not an option by the time rifle season rolls around.
Among other various hunting and trapping seasons this time of year is a week for archers to harvest black bears. The week-long season opened Monday and wraps up tomorrow.
But it’s not a season that sees much activity, Snickles said.
“We certainly get bears taken in bear archery season, but generally speaking, none of our officers get inundated with checking bears in the field during this early archery bear season,” he said.
“The vast bulk of our bears are harvested in the actual four-day bear rifle season,” he added.
According to data from the PGC’s 2017 Black Bear Harvest Age report, 50 black bears were harvested in Fayette County, 14 of which were taken during the bear archery season.
Only one bear was harvested in Greene County, while 19 bears were taken in Westmoreland County. No black bears were harvested in Washington County.
Tomorrow’s the last day for archers to participate in the bear archery season. Otherwise, they’ll have to wait until Nov. 17 for a chance to take one with a rifle.
For those in WMU 2C, which encompasses parts of Fayette, Westmoreland and Somerset counties, they’ll have another four days to harvest a bear from Nov. 28 to Dec. 1.