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Outdoors

Commisioners increase fees, delay funding cuts

HARRISBURG — The Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission this week increased some fees, installed new board officers and made other changes, while delaying a plan to cut spending on popular items such as fish hatcheries. Commissioners acted on a number of revenue enhancements brought forward by staff designed to counter declines in traditional revenue and escalating costs associated with current programs. Collectively, these revenue enhancements are projected to raise $1.2 million annually beginning in Fiscal Year 2018-19. These enhancements include the introduction of four ...

Snake hunters head to hills

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — The hunter and his son scrambled up a secret mountain in Columbia County, and far above them, a serpent knew they were coming. The snake sat coiled in a rock vein, waiting for the sun to warm its cold blood. It sensed every vibration and tasted the hunters’ sweat with its forked tongue. Glen Ellsworth III, 44, and his son, Glen IV, 19, were just about on top of the snake on a recent Saturday morning when it let them know it was there. Nature, thankfully, had balanced out a timber rattlesnake’s formidable fangs with a simple and loud warning system on its ...

CWD cases multiply in state

HARRISBURG — The number of chronic wasting disease cases continues to multiply in Pennsylvania, and more of the state’s residents are being impacted by rules that aim to slow the spread of the disease, which always is fatal to the deer and elk it infects. In 2017, chronic wasting disease was detected in 78 free-ranging deer in Pennsylvania. That’s more than three times the number of free-ranging, CWD-positive deer documented in the state in 2016. Most of the new free-ranging positives either were within or near the boundary of Disease Management Area 2 in southcentral ...

Danville’s Cram on target with custom rifles

HARRISBURG — Life can be good for the hunter who has stockpiled his preference points, selected the dates and made the final payment with an outfitter for what will be the most anticipated Western elk or mule deer hunt of his lifetime. Such scenarios played out hundreds of times at ...

Ancestor’s handiwork brings family together in Pine Grove

PINE GROVE (AP) — Johannes “John” Bonawitz moved to Pine Grove from Womelsdorf in 1809, bringing with him a knack for gunsmithing. On Saturday, dozens of Bonawitz descendants from across the country gathered at Twin Grove Campground for the first Bonawitz family reunion. Among the food, drinks and documents detailing the family tree was a family artifact made by Johannes himself. A Kempton gunshop owner, Greg Dixon, had an original Bonawitz rifle in his possession and was invited to attend the reunion at the request of event organizer Erica Elliott. He acquired the rifle in the ...

History kept alive through fisheries program

The origins of species that the walleye are part of — the perch family — are a very old fish. According to the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission, fossils within this family have been found in the western region of the United States to be 38 million years old. The walleye today are ...