State’s bear harvest is 5th-best
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HARRISBURG – Pennsylvania bear hunters had quite the year in 2021.
They took 3,659 bears across last year’s various seasons. That ranks as the state’s fifth-best harvest ever, and the second-largest recorded since 2011.
The 2020 bear harvest, for comparison’s sake, was 3,621.
The statewide regular bear season accounted for the largest part of the 2021 bear harvest. Hunters took 1,315 bears in that four-day hunt.
The extended bear season, which last year for the first time allowed hunters to harvest bears throughout the opening weekend of deer season in some Wildlife Management Units, contributed 1,128 animals to the harvest. The archery bear season added another 680, while the muzzleloader/special firearms bear season harvest was 536.
Pennsylvania hunters recorded their all-time best bear season in 2019, when they harvested 4,653.
That Pennsylvania continues to produce so many bears across so many seasons, year after year, speaks to the health of the state’s bear population, said Emily Carrollo, the Game Commission’s black bear biologist.
“Pennsylvania has a long history of supporting a lot of black bears, many of truly impressive size, across most of the state,” Carrollo said. “Best of all, the future continues to look bright for this resource, too.”
Hunters certainly appreciate the opportunity Pennsylvania bear hunting represents.
A total of 215,219 people – 205,812 of them state residents – bought bear licenses in 2021. That was down slightly from 220,471 in 2020, but still the second-highest number of bear licenses ever sold in any one year. Sales totaled 202,043 in 2019, 174,869 in 2018 and, going back further, 147,728 in 2009.
Harvest report
Bears were taken in 59 of 67 counties and 22 of Pennsylvania’s 23 Wildlife Management Units in the 2021 seasons.
The largest bear reported is the 722-pound male taken with a shotgun in the extended season, Dec. 4, in Letterkenny Township in Franklin County, by Wade Glessner, of Shippensburg.
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.
Other large bears from the 2021 bear seasons, all but one taken with a rifle, include: a 681-pound male taken with a bow in archery season in Newport Township, Luzerne County, by Neil Minnich of Nanticoke.
Lycoming County gave up 212 bears to rank first among counties for bear harvest. Potter County ranked second with 180 and Pike County third with 167.
Final harvests by are counties (with 2020 figures in parentheses) are:
Southwest – 247 (260): Armstrong, 58 (56); Somerset, 58 (70); Fayette, 49 (43); Westmoreland, 41 (32); Cambria, 19 (24); Indiana, 12 (30); Allegheny, 7 (3); and Greene, 3 (2).