Protecting Pennsylvania’s deer and elk from chronic wasting disease remains a priority, now as ever. That hasn’t changed.
But the rules for hunters who harvest those or any other cervids outside of Pennsylvania or within parts of it have. Previously, hunters were prohibited from bringing “high-risk” carcass parts from such animals taken in other states back to Pennsylvania.
Pennsylvania game commissioners at their recent quarterly meeting added substantially to the state game lands system, with three deals especially noteworthy.
First, the commissioners approved an oil and gas agreement with Pennsylvania General Energy Co. The company will extract oil and gas from beneath a portion of State Game Land 75 in Brown and Pine townships, Lycoming County, using existing infrastructure so that there’s no net increase in surface disturbance. In exchange, the company will convey to the Game Commission 2,195 acres in Spring Creek Township, Warren County, known as the Spring Creek Tract, and 943 acres in East Taylor and Croyle townships, Cambria County, known as the South Fork Tract.
The Pennsylvania Game Commission has made changes to the state’s chronic wasting disease management areas including the creation of a new such area, the expansion of an existing area, and reduction of an existing area.
The new Disease Management Area 8 was created as a response to two recent CWD detections in road-killed deer in Dauphin County. The newly established area includes portions of Dauphin, Lebanon, Northumberland, and Schuylkill counties, and is about 660 square miles in size. This was the first time CWD was detected in free-ranging deer on the east side of the Susquehanna River.
Southwest Regional Director Jason Farabaugh recently announced that the Pennsylvania Game Commission has been made aware of a mechanical malfunction of the water-control structure on Cranberry Glade Lake in Somerset County.
The result of this mechanical malfunction is the lake is losing water at a faster rate than desired, causing a continuous decrease in water levels.
Pennsylvania’s Deer Management Assistance Program – better known as DMAP – is available on some state game lands for the first time in the 2023-24 hunting seasons.
Through DMAP, hunters can get permits that allow them to harvest antlerless deer – one per tag – on the specific property for which the permit was issued.
The Pennsylvania Game Commission again is seeking input from the public in surveying wild turkeys this summer. The annual Pennsylvania Wild Turkey Sighting Survey is underway and runs through Aug. 31.
The second round of antlerless deer license sales, in which Pennsylvania hunters can pick up a second antlerless license for the 2023-24 seasons, begins Monday, July 24 at 8 a.m.
Antlerless licenses are available anywhere hunting licenses are sold, including online at HuntFish.PA.gov. More than 480,000 antlerless licenses and more than 490,000 general hunting licenses have sold since licenses went on sale June 26.
Pennsylvania game commissioners, at their recent meeting, approved acquisitions adding about 1,034 acres to state game lands. That involves the purchase of eight properties.
With a little time yet to go in the 2022-23 surveillance year, the Game Commission has already detected chronic wasting disease in more deer this year than the one before, once again highlighting the threat the disease poses to Pennsylvania’s deer and elk, and hunting heritage.
Since July 1, 2022, the Game Commission collected nearly 11,000 CWD samples from deer. Hunter-harvested samples made up the bulk of those, with more than 7,000. To date, a total of more than 400 wild deer tested positive for CWD, 243 of them harvested by hunters.
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