A good friend of mine from camp shot the largest Bear in the PA rifle season this year 772# I was next to him in the drive, and watched the whole thing unfold.
Here is a news paper article about the states Bear season.
Pennsylvania's Pocono region has long been hailed as the one region of the state that routinely gives up the heaviest black bears to hunters, and with good reason.
All of the half-dozen bears ever killed in this state that topped 800 pounds live weight had come from that general area. And the heaviest bear taken this year did, too.
David Price — in what has been a widely publicized case — killed an 875-pound Monroe County black bear that was routinely living on human handouts and had even earned the nickname "Bozo" from one man who had been cited for illegally feeding it. The bear is the heaviest ever recorded killed in the state.
But the southwest corner of the state can now put in a claim on big bears, too.
According to Pennsylvania Game Commission records, the second-, third- and fourth-heaviest bears checked this year all were taken within a two-hour drive of Pittsburgh.
The No. 2 bear this year, weight-wise, was a 772-pound male taken on opening day of the firearms bear season in Larimer Township, Somerset County. That's in wildlife management unit 2C. It was harvested by Randy Chabol of Somerset.The No. 3 and No. 4 bears, meanwhile, both were taken in Indiana County, which is split by wildlife management units 2D and 2C.
The heavier of the two was a 694-pound male killed by Christopher Schulteis of Kittanning, also on opening day, in Armstrong Township in unit 2D. The "smaller" of the two was a 679-pound male taken in Wheatfield Township, in unit 2C, by Ronald Chero of Homer City.
Pike County accounted for two of the next six heaviest bears, as did Wayne, to get the Poconos back in the top 10. Centre County produced one of the other heaviest bears, as did Sullivan.
Overall, hunters this year killed 37 bears weighing 500 pounds or more, maintaining Pennsylvania's reputation for producing the largest black bears in the world.
The jury is out on whether the season was a success.
Game Commissioners agreed in the spring to change the structure of bear season. The archery-only season was extended and, in the biggest change, the firearms season was moved to open on a Saturday rather than a Monday.
The goal was two-fold: to give more hunters an opportunity to hunt bears and to perhaps, as a result, help better control nuisance bear populations.
Jerry Feaser, press secretary for the commission, was out of the office all week, and no information on how many bear licenses were sold this year as compared to last was available. What is known is that the overall bear harvest, while good, was not the state's best.
Pennsylvania's record bear harvest occurred in 2005, when hunters took 4,164. This fall, they killed 3,039 bears across 53 counties, according to preliminary data. Of those, 224 were taken during the five-day archery season and 2,815 during the three-day gun season.
Combined, that ranks as the state's seventh-best bear harvest, but the lowest since 2007.
The Saturday opener did conform to past Monday openers in one sense, though, in that it was the day when more bears were killed than any other.
Official harvest figures won't be available until early 2011, but according to Cal DuBrock, director of the commission's bureau of wildlife management, 1,751 bears were taken on opening day of the firearms bear season. Days two and three — held on the following Monday and Tuesday — produced 793 and 271 respectively.
The kill was more evenly spread out during five-day archery season. Hunters took 90 bears Nov. 15, 32 Nov. 16, 26 Nov. 17, 23 Nov. 18 and 53 Nov. 19.
