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Outdoors

Hunt with care: Rare virus found to be in Pennsylvania

From staff reports HARRISBURG — Chronic Wasting Disease isn’t the only malady impacting hunters and wildlife in Penn’s Woods this year. A rare mosquito-transmitted virus has been documented in Pennsylvania, and the Pennsylvania Game Commission is encouraging hunters and others who spend time outdoors to take precautions against mosquito bites and report to the agency any dead or strange-acting wild animals they believe to have been infected. Eastern Equine Encephalitis (EEE) was documented in wildlife and livestock in Pennsylvania in October. It was found in two wild turkeys ...

Deer on the move on state roadways

HARRISBURG — With deer becoming increasingly active, and daylight-saving time soon to put more vehicles on the road during the hours when deer move most, the Pennsylvania Game Commission is advising motorists to slow down and stay alert. Deer become more active in autumn with the lead-up to their fall breeding season, commonly referred to as the “rut.” Around this time, many yearling bucks disperse from the areas in which they were born and travel, sometimes several dozen miles, to find new ranges. Meanwhile, adult bucks more often are cruising their home ranges in search of ...

Elk hunting grows in popularity in Pa.

Elk once roamed freely all over the state of Pennsylvania. Unfortunately, the growing settlement of the area and subsequent exploitation by of the elk by these early settlers the herds could not survive. It’s estimated that by 1867 there were no more elk to be found in Pennsylvania. Unregulated hunting and habitat loss were the biggest factors of their demise. In 1913 the Pennsylvania Game Commission began reintroducing elk into Pennsylvania. The elk herd we witness today came from 177 elk that were trapped and transferred to northern areas of Pennsylvania. This reintroduction of ...

Trapping furbearers may be making a comeback

Many moons ago, the woods of Pennsylvania were a completely different place. Rather than a place that drew a mostly recreational type crowd, much like today, these woods were full of people working hard to making a living. Abundantly filled with logging crews, hunting gangs, and miles upon miles of trap lines that were manned by those who did their best to supply the booming fur trade. Trapping’s thousands of years of tradition have been a part of the human race that dates way back to our prehistoric ancestors who invented the original pit traps. A pit trap was a large hole dug by ...

Twist in yearslong effort to save North Dakota sage grouse

BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — Wildlife officials who have been transplanting sage grouse from Wyoming to North Dakota since 2017 have adjusted their tactics this summer to try to keep relocated birds from wandering back out of the state in search of better habitat. The fine-tuning of the nearly million-dollar effort comes after about a decade of planning and implementation, coinciding with other efforts to save the bird that some believe is on the brink of calamity. But it’s still not known whether the sage grouse population in North Dakota will ever return to a level at which the upland ...

Beating the heat

As summer winds down, some of us like to get up close and personal with the fish. The dog days of August with their high temperatures and humidity make getting in the water a treat. At this time of year, nothing is better for beating the heat than wet wading. While bass fishing has become a high-tech sport, with powerful bass boats, sophisticated electronics and state-of-the-art gear, wade fishing is about as simple as it gets. All you need is an old pair of “crick shoes,” a pair of shorts, a rod, and a few lures or some live bait. My wading shoes for many years had been ...