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Ben Moyer

Golden-year milestone for Pennsylvania’s Laurel Highlands Trail

Featured, Home Page News, National News, Nature Page & Night Sky, News, Pennsylvania /

Should you find yourself on Route 219 near Johnstown, Cambria County, headed south near the Windber exit, take a glance westward (right) from the highway. You can’t miss what ignited the imagination of four friends from Johnstown back in the 1960s. A high forested ridge dominates the view, slanting away as far as you can see to the hazy southwest.
That soaring escarpment is the Great Laurel Ridge, a defining feature of Pennsylvania’s Laurel Highlands region.

Golden-year milestone for Pennsylvania’s Laurel Highlands Trail Read More »

Ben Moyer: Saying goodbye after more than two decades of writing for Pennsylvania Outdoor News

Featured, Fishing, Hunting, Opinion, Pennsylvania /

Except for an arranged recent absence, it has been my privilege to write this “Ridgelines” column for every edition of Pennsylvania Outdoor News since the publication’s inception in 2003. Our editor, and my friend, Jeff Mulhollem, tells me that’s something like 559 consecutive columns or, in a writer’s way of thinking, a half-million words.
In Ridgelines’ early years, the column examined controversial issues in fish and wildlife management. I often traveled to Harrisburg then, attended meetings and listened to reports and testimony.

Ben Moyer: Saying goodbye after more than two decades of writing for Pennsylvania Outdoor News Read More »

Ben Moyer: Pennsylvania Fish & Boat Commission’s mussel lab spurs recovery in Dunkard Creek

Featured, Fishing, Home Page News, National Fishing, Nature Page & Night Sky, Pennsylvania /

Dunkard Creek is a lovely stream, flowing eastward for 37 miles, snaking back-and-forth across the Pennsylvania-West Virginia border to join the Monongahela River near Mount Morris, Greene County. For anglers and paddlers from central Pennsylvania, it’s roughly the size, volume and gradient of the Conodoguinet Creek in Cumberland County.
Until 2009, Dunkard Creek was also a dynamic coolwater fishery, a popular regional draw for catching muskies, smallmouth bass and catfish.

Ben Moyer: Pennsylvania Fish & Boat Commission’s mussel lab spurs recovery in Dunkard Creek Read More »

Ben Moyer: Trip from Pennsylvania to Minnesota’s Lake of the Woods worth the miles to extend ice-fishing season

Featured, Featured, Features, Fishing, Fishing, Home Page News, Minnesota, National Fishing, Pennsylvania /

My wife’s observation summed it up. “Do you realize you are going in the opposite direction of 99% of people traveling this time of year?”
“Uh, yep!”
That exchange followed a disclosure that my friends and I hadn’t had enough ice-fishing during the two-week window of safe ice we’d enjoyed in mid-January, the longest span to grace southern Pennsylvania waters in several winters, and that friend Eugene Gordon and I were headed to Lake of the Woods, Minnesota.

Ben Moyer: Trip from Pennsylvania to Minnesota’s Lake of the Woods worth the miles to extend ice-fishing season Read More »

Ben Moyer: Will hellbenders really get endangered species listing? Don’t hold your breath

2 Comments / Discussions, Featured, Home Page News, Nature Page & Night Sky, Opinion, Pennsylvania /

Never has there been a more unfortunate endangered species than the hellbender. Actually, the hellbender is a candidate Endangered species, not yet officially listed as Endangered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the federal agency which administers the Endangered Species Act, made law by the elected 93rd Congress in 1973.
The service did, however, declare its intent to list the hellbender as Endangered in December 2024, a long, long time ago in the upended realm of federal actions. Part of the hellbender’s misfortune may be bad timing.

Ben Moyer: Will hellbenders really get endangered species listing? Don’t hold your breath Read More »

Ben Moyer: Pennsylvania’s Under 7 mentor rule a beneficial filter

Featured, Home Page News, Hunting, National Hunting, Opinion, Pennsylvania /

You can’t call it a controversy, and certainly not a conflict. But you could fairly consider it debate, in the best sense of the word, defined by Webster’s, as a noun: “a regulated discussion of a proposition between two matched sides,” and as a verb: “to discuss a question by considering opposed arguments.”
This debate centers on the Pennsylvania Game Commission’s Mentored Hunting Program – specifically, whether mentored hunters younger than 7 should be issued their own tags for deer and wild turkey with their Mentored Hunting Program permit.

Ben Moyer: Pennsylvania’s Under 7 mentor rule a beneficial filter Read More »

Ben Moyer: Will winter-kill of whitetails return to Pennsylvania this year?

Featured, Home Page News, Hunting, National Hunting, Opinion, Pennsylvania /

The complexity of managing white-tailed deer in today’s world has become apparent to all stakeholders. But deer management may be about to become even more complicated because of the possible reemergence of a variable we haven’t thought about for decades in Pennsylvania – winter mortality.
Readers who lived through the 1960s and ‘70s recall deer winter-kill was a continual concern among hunters and wildlife managers. In northern mountains, trout anglers then often reported dead deer along streams as the snow melted in April.

Ben Moyer: Will winter-kill of whitetails return to Pennsylvania this year? Read More »

Ben Moyer: A treasured (but illegal?) text alerting me to a buck’s location

Featured, Features, Home Page News, Hunting, National Hunting, Pennsylvania /

Hopefully, in our age of instantaneous communication, all hunters understand it’s illegal to use a cellphone or electronic device as an aid in the taking of game. The pertinent regulation in Pennsylvania states this:
“Portable two-way radios and cellphones may be used for general communications with another hunter, but may not be used to direct or alert another hunter of the presence or location of live game or wildlife.

Ben Moyer: A treasured (but illegal?) text alerting me to a buck’s location Read More »

Ben Moyer: Pennsylvania bear trends clear on PGC’s harvest data page

Featured, Home Page News, Hunting, National Hunting, Opinion, Pennsylvania /

Maps are useful in understanding wildlife management matters, and maps have come a long way. I miss the maps once published in PA Game News that expressed the deer kill by county. That map sparked my interest in the geography of my home state, which I harbor even now.
Because it’s difficult to stop thinking about hunting after the season (deer) is closed, I happened across a page on the Game Commission website that, for me, was a new discovery.

Ben Moyer: Pennsylvania bear trends clear on PGC’s harvest data page Read More »

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