HARRISBURG - There was good, albeit surprising, news for area hunters during Tuesday's Pennsylvania Game Commission board of game commissioners first quarterly meeting at agency headquarters.
Moments before the meeting concluded, Northeast Region commissioner Jay Delaney of Wilkes-Barre announced executive director Matt Hough had a major announcement. That news had been received by the PGC from Pheasants Forever biologist Lynn Appleman on Monday night.
"Last night, we learned that as many as 300 wild pheasants will be trapped on an Indian reservation in Montana for stocking in our wild pheasant recovery areas," Hough said. "We have been unable to stock our WPRAs the last three years because of declining pheasant populations in the West, but we're working with a new tribe and we're hopeful of getting these birds in the near future."
This is good news for the Hegins-Gratz Valley WPRA in Schuylkill and Dauphin counties, which have been unable to have a second stocking of wild, self-perpetuating pheasants since the initial stocking three years ago. In spite of that, flushing surveys have shown that birds from the initial stocking have survived and established a breeding population.
"We got this news from Lynn last night around 8 o'clock, and a lot of people have been doing a lot of work behind the scenes for us to get to this point," Delaney said. "No. 1 has been the partnership between Pheasants Forever and the Pennsylvania Game Commission, and Dave Putnam has been working very closely with this."
Putnam, who was re-elected to a second term as vice-president of the board of game commissioners during the meeting, said that snow is needed to bait and trap the wild pheasants. He said there is some snow now on the reservation in Montana, but more snow is needed and expected.
'Three years ago, some of the birds that were intended for the Somerset WPRA went to Hegins, so some of these birds will go to Somerset," Putnam said. "We'll just have to wait and see how many we get, but our plans are for birds to go to both Hegins and Somerset."
The main objective of Tuesday's meeting was the preliminary approval of the 2014-15 hunting and trapping seasons and bag limits, which will be given final approval at the second quarterly meeting Monday-Tuesday, April 7-8.
The 2014-15 seasons and bag limits will be nearly identical to those for the current license year. There is, however, expected to be a major change with the Mentored Youth Hunting Program becoming the Mentored Hunting Program.
This change in name reflects a change in the program that will allow properly licensed adult or senior hunters to become mentors to adult hunters who have never been licensed in Pennsylvania or any other state or country.
Under the program, a hunter can participate as a mentee for three consecutive years before being required to pass the PGC hunter-trapper education course and purchase a license.