Pennsylvania Game News - April 2010 - 31

Early Bear Management By G. C. Wakefield I N THE LATE 1940s and early ’50s my father and his buddies would set off for bear camp near Cross Fork in Potter County. The preparations were great, but the results were predictable — long on hunting stories but short on game. That culture is largely gone now, but memories remain of the week-long retreats to remote cabins in hopes of getting a bear. Back then there was no overt bear management. With a general hunting license, a person was entitled to take a bear and a buck, along with small game. Compared to today’s harvest of around 3,000 or more annually, bear kills were low back then, averaging only 382 from 1944-1969, and were basically confined to 15 counties: Lackawanna, Monroe, Pike, Bradford, Cameron, Clearfield, Clinton, Elk, Forest, Lycoming, McKean, Potter, Sullivan, Tioga and Warren. In 1967, I was a graduate student at Penn State, majoring in wildlife management, and chose the bear as my thesis subject. It became immediately apparent that little was known about Pennsylvania’s bear population. Research had been done in New York and Virginia, but Pennsylvania had little data to support management decisions. Starting from ground zero, anything I did would be groundbreaking, which was a staggering thought to a newly married 23year-old. Fortunately, Dr. James S. Lindzey, leader of the Pennsylvania Cooperative Wildlife Research Unit at Penn State, guided me. The Wildlife Unit was a collaboration with Penn State University, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the APRIL 2010 Game Commission and the Wildlife Management Institute. These four agencies administered funds earmarked for wildlife research projects derived from the Pittman-Robertson Act. My research project was to define bear range and evaluate habitat and movements in Pennsylvania. Meetings with district game protectors (WCOs now) in the 15 counties mentioned helped me identify critical habitat in their districts. Guy Waldman in Mt. Jewett was my first contact, followed by others, such as Don Parr in Austin, Norm Erickson in Emporium, Dave Titus in Warren, Chuck Keiper in Renovo, Harold Harshbarger in Kersey and Leo Milford in Ridgway. The knowledge of those individuals was invaluable in gaining an appreciation of bear range and habitat in Pennsylvania. And that step turned out to be the easy part of my project. More difficult was gaining an understanding of bear movements. To do this, a research area was established in southern Cameron County, centered on the Wycoff Run Watershed, comprising 16,653 acres. This area was located entirely within the 50,000-acre Quehanna Wilderness Area in the Moshannon State Forest. Baiting areas were established to attract bears, so they could be trapped and then ear-tagged and equipped with radio telemetry transmitters for tracking movements — a first for bears in Pennsylvania.

Pennsylvania Game News - April 2010

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