Posts Tagged → data
Yeah, PA’s lame bear season in one picture
Pennsylvania is about to have one of its lowest bear harvests in decades. And like so many policies of any sort, the story of this failure is told not just by the data, but by a picture of the data (see below).
In sum, this year’s early bear seasons of archery and muzzleloader resulted in roughly 1200 bears being taken by hunters. These are predominantly individual hunters in elevated stands, not crews of drivers pushing bears to standers.
By the time the real firearms “bear season” arrives in late November, much of the steam has been bled out of the system, so to speak. The demand has been met. Many serious bear hunters have already taken their bear and they won’t be going “to camp” to participate in punishing bear drives through thick mountain laurel on steep mountains in the northcentral region. And when the most ardent hunters pull out of a camp, that loss of energy and excitement affects everyone else. We noticed many empty camps across the entire northern tier this past week.
Again, the 1,217 bears taken in the early season so far are 200 bears ahead of the roughly 1,000 bears on record for the “bear season” as of tonight, which is the end of the formal “bear season.” In other words, bear season wasn’t. It is actually producing behind the early season.
So is the early season the real bear season now?
Add a poor acorn crop to the situation, and whatever bears were roaming around in October’s early season have gone to den for the winter now in our “bear season,” or have moved southward by the time November arrives, because all of the available wild food has been eaten up. We are now in our third year of a failed acorn crop in the northern tier, and the silence of our woods shows it. No food means no wildlife. Hunters saw no poop, no deer rubs, no squirrels, no nothing. Hunters scouring rugged northern tier landscapes that are the historic high producers of bears are encountering woods devoid not just of bears, but of deer and turkey, as well.
Yesterday was a classic example of this dynamic. Our guys put on a drive across a NW Lycoming County mountaintop area that usually holds bears. I was the lone stander in the primo spot, a saddle between two hills with a stream running through. I could see far in every direction. There were no other drives happening anywhere around our guys, which is unusual. But another and much larger drive was going on behind me, and pushing toward the area we had hunted the day before. And half a mile down the forest road several long range hunters were set up looking across a canyon. If there were bears around, or even deer, the two drives would push them past the long range guys, at least.
And yet, by the time dusk arrived and our men had slid and tumbled down the mountain side to gather at the truck, no one anywhere had seen a bear or a deer, nor heard a shot. The long range guys were packing up as we were driving out, and they told us they had seen several deer on Sunday, but nothing else any other day, including that day that had so much activity.
The Pennsylvania Game Commission is a government agency, and agencies make mistakes. Sometimes the best-intended and carefully considered policies have unintended consequences. Maybe the Saturday opener (as opposed to the long-time Monday opener) to bear season is part of the failure we are seeing. Maybe it’s the acorn crop failure making a bad situation worse. Maybe it’s the early season stealing all of the thunder from the regular rifle bear season. I don’t know the entire answer why, but the numbers don’t lie, and this 2023 bear season was a flop. Yes, we will see another 100-200 bears taken in the extended season that is concurrent with deer season in some Wildlife Management Units. But overall, PA has not seen a bear harvest this low in a long time. And as I recall, last year wasn’t that great, either.
Something is wrong and something needs to change. A lot of small businesses in rural areas depend on these big bear and deer seasons to make their end-of-year financial goals. Let’s hope the PGC staff and the board are up to the task of fixing it.
Harvest results as of the last night of regular rifle bear season, 2023. Not final, but not going to change much. The early season was the best season.
Reflections on 2020 bear season
As if by magic or just the batting of an eyelid, the much anticipated 2020 bear season is now behind us, having concluded at dark yesterday. Sad to see our friends go; we had such a fun time! The last of our bear hunting guests have left, cleanup has commenced, preparations are under way for Thanksgiving, and there are some reflections to be had on bear season.
First, where the hell were the bears? Serious question here. We hunt in a mountainous Northcentral area that is Pennsylvania’s “Bear Central.” And despite us daily scouring a lot of remote, very rugged territory that is usually home to lots of bears, we saw neither bears nor bear poop. None. It could be the warm weather has bears hunkered down under cool overhangs in even more remote places. It could be the low acorn crop has bears going in to hibernation early, because there is no more food for them to eat to put on the extra fat they need to hibernate successfully. The truth is, no bear tracks or poops have been seen around here for months, which is remarkable. I cannot think of any year prior like this.
Second, where were all the hunters? We heard only a few shots between Saturday and Sunday, and either none or one on Monday, and for sure none on Tuesday; and very few hunting parties were on the radio on any day. This means that few large scale hunting drives were going on. Without hunters moving across the landscape, the bears don’t have to move out of their way. They can just sit still and not run the risk of exposing their rib cage to a hunter’s bullet. That means that the bears can loaf about in some remote corner, escaping the unseasonable warmth or just waiting for the wafting human scent to drift away before making their usual rounds again. Which means the few hunters who are out don’t see much action.
Third, where were all the other critters, like turkeys and deer? Like with bears, we saw very little deer or turkey poop in the woods. And although I myself saw two whopper bucks and a five-point up close, no one else saw any deer. Nor did any of us see any turkeys. Once again, the absence of these otherwise ubiquitous animals could be due to the relative absence of acorns. Which would push the wildlife far afield to find food sources.
Fourth, despite all of our hunting setbacks, did any of us care a bit? No! We missed all of our friends who could not be with us for various reasons, like fear of the CCP virus, or family emergencies requiring them to stay at home. But those of us who gathered had a lot of fun nonetheless. And with or without a bear on the game pole, we would not have missed this time together for any reason at all. We caught up on our families, our work, our homes, cars, friendships, wives, and politics (yeah, there was a lot of pro-Trump politics). Some people drank way too much alcohol, and we got some great pictures of it all, like the one guy asleep on the cold ground outside. No, we don’t post those here. We ate like kings, that is for sure, and no one lacked for food or drink.
Finally, it is possible that the new early bears seasons (archery, muzzleloader, and special junior+ senior rifle) are removing so many bears from the woods that come rifle season, very few huntable bears remain to be had. According to real-time hunting harvest data posted at the PA Game Commission website, more bears were killed in the early seasons than in the official rifle season this year. This means there are fewer bears available for the rifle hunters. It is possible that many hunters expected this, based on last year’s harvest patterns, and they stayed home or hunted alone, instead of joining the big crew at camp, like usual. As of late today, just 3,138 bears had been killed total this year. That is about a thousand fewer than expected.
Based on this raw data alone, the early bear seasons are actually backfiring. They are not removing the high surplus number of bears that are beyond Pennsylvania’s social carrying capacity. Rather, the early bear seasons are removing the easiest bears and leaving few to be hunted in the later rifle season.
And this new dynamic could be the real story in PA’s bear season: There are so many early season bear hunting opportunities for individuals that they collectively take the wind out of the sails for the regular season hunters, thereby having a boomerang effect on the entire thing and limiting it.
We won’t know what all this data really means for another few years, and by then either great or even fatal damage will have been done to Pennsylvania’s traditional bear camp culture, with its big gatherings and big drives and big camp camaraderie dying out, or we will simply all have to learn to adapt to new ways of hunting. I have to say, there is no substitute for men gathering at a camp to hunt together. The gathered hunting party is the most human of experiences; it is an institution as old as our species. Its purpose was not just making meat, but also social and sociological.
I sure hope these myriad new early bear seasons are not self-defeating, in that they do not kill that traditional bear camp culture by removing its whole purpose ahead of the game. Question for the PGC: What incentive is there to push your body hard through rugged and remote landscapes, destroying your boots, tearing your clothing, and often losing or breaking some of your gear, including damaging your gun, when the animal you are seeking has already been removed?
Below are some photos from one of our trail cameras two years ago. Just days after bear season ended, a bear was caught gloriously and most joyously rubbing its back against a young white pine tree. Almost like a pole dancer. Pretty hot hip shakes there. We haven’t seen a bear anywhere around here since May this year.
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When one of our guys is finally browbeaten into washing dishes after years, it is cause for “Notify the media” acts like taking his unhappy picture. This is back in 2015. He still has to be browbeaten into washing the damned dishes
Lycoming County is the boot-looking shape in the northcentral area. Its northwestern corner is where we hunt. The darkest township there demonstrates the importance of organized hunting drives. A bunch of large hunting clubs are located in this area, and their members put on highly coordinated, obviously successful drives.
The spy on my trusty old laptop
Microsoft Windows may be the industry standard for personal computers, but with the advent of the much-hated Windows 10 operating system, the company has sought to join the data spying craze afflicting nearly every digital user.
This forced spyware is driving users batty.
Who wants to click the “YES – SPY ON ME” Windows 10 install button? Not many people. At least not people who value their privacy.
One of the reasons cell phone users are going back to flip phones is because they are tired of being spied on by the various software companies that run the “smart phones” like iPhone.
Likewise, I am joining the growing number of non-Internet-connected PC users.
A personal computer is a valuable tool, an effective tool, and between the spreadsheet and writing software on it, it does a lot for my life and business. However, once connected to the Internet, that same PC becomes a spy turned back on the connected user. Some of the hacking involves using the PC’s camera to surreptitiously watch the user. For that reason a small piece of sticky note pad paper covers the never-used camera on my PC.
Now I have a cheap PC for Internet use, a PC with nothing on it but basic software. And then another PC with my data and files.
I found a way to stop Windows 10 from installing, and it’s actually easy to do. I highly recommend it. Reports over the past year about Windows 10 are not flattering. It is designed simply to turn your PC into a spy, to pick apart and report on not only your online habits, but your personal software uses and writing content.
And Microsoft is allowed to spy on you because you hit the YES – SPY ON ME install button.
You call this global warming?
Not only is the northern hemisphere in a deep freeze, a bunch of “climate change scientists” looking for evidence to support their religion … Oops … I mean their theory, got frozen in the Antarctic ice. Their ship is immobilized because so much ice is not only not melting, but actually increasing. Rescue ships also got frozen.
Members of the crew said it was the most ice they’d seen in years.
Guess what? Planet Earth is a dynamic place, with dynamic weather patterns and a multitude of factors simultaneously influencing climate.
Trying to ascribe cause-and-effect to these factors, or even worse, claiming to know what’s really happening with all these factors, is not science.
It’s politics, for sure. We know how clean that is.
Its adherents behave as though they’re in a cult, or at least in some charismatic religion.
Too many environmental groups use crisis to whip up support for their causes and to fund raise. Climate change appears to be one more scare tactic. The evidence just isn’t there to support the claims. Today’s zero temperature is classic.
But if you want to talk about overfishing the oceans, loss of farmland, loss of critical wildlife habitat, good wildlife management, why then reasonable people are interested.
In the mean time, I’m shoveling loads of carbon…oops, sorry, I mean firewood, into our wood stove as we trade yesterday’s carbon for today’s heat. Seems like a good and sustainable trade to me.