Pennsylvania Game News - August 2020 - 37

lack of protection to help these animals.
"Our game laws, some of them drawn
as far back as 1878, do not seem to meet
the requirements of this time," Kalbfus
wrote in 1904. "Other methods appear
necessary, and I therefore suggest that the
entire law of the state relative to game and
bird protection be carefully considered,
altered and amended to suit present conditions and placed under a single title."
Kalbfus was convinced bears were
getting a bad reputation for sheep depredations by feral dogs. Data he collected
proved to him the few bears in the state
couldn't cause the sheep losses being
reported. Kalbfus started to campaign for
bears, which he believed exceeded the
whitetail in prowess and as a big-game
challenge.
Act 248 of 1905 set the state's first bear
season: Oct. 1 to March 1. It was a big
step for bear conservation - Pennsylvania
was among the first states to give bears
closed-season protection - but hunters
had no bag limit and were allowed to
harvest hibernating bears. The law also
created a $50 penalty for shooting bears
out of season, unless property damage or
personal injury was at risk.
Kalbfus' appreciation of black bears
is easy to assess in his 1907 annual
report.
"Some opposed the restrictions
placed on bear hunting because
bears are a 'ferocious and most
destructive animal...,'" Kalbfus
wrote. "The weight of the combined
evidence at my hands causes me to
consider the bear more timid and shy
than even a deer and satisfies me that
on approach of human beings it will run
more quickly and much farther than will
a deer or any other wild animal found in
our forests."
Given the amount of young forestland
AUGUST 2020

- an effect of deforestation - on the Pennsylvania landscape in the 20th century's
opening decade, bears were taken mostly
with dogs and through snow-tracking and
drives. There probably was a mind-set
among some bear hunters that den-raiding
was acceptable.
But Kalbfus fought to secure greater
protection for bears, and in 1909, the
General Assembly changed Pennsylvania's bear season to Oct. 1 through Jan. 1.
In 1911, steel traps were banned in bear
trapping; pitfalls and pen traps would be
banned in 1915. And a one-bear bag limit
was put in place the same year.
With the reduced bag limit, an immediate drop in harvest was noticed by Kalbfus, who reported 250 bears were taken in
1915; "This is about 200 less than were
killed last year," he wrote.
With additional protection, however,
it didn't take long for the state's growing bear population to start getting into
trouble. Kalbfus reported in 1917 that
bears were raiding beehives and killing
pigs and sheep. It was a problem that
would continue to escalate, and cause
the Legislature in 1923 to enact the Bear
Damage Law, establishing an annual
$3,000 fund to pay claims for livestock,
bees and poultry damages.
But the turnaround bears were making
were along the lines Kalbfus had envisioned, and he'd work during the same
time to restore wild turkeys, as well.
Next to bobwhites, turkeys were probably Kalbfus' favorite game bird. Once he
secured the manpower and funding, he
launched an ambitious enterprise - wild
turkey trap-and-transfer.
"Some of this work is experimental
and we may fall short of success, but I
feel that without a beginning there can be
no finish...," Kalbfus wrote in his 1905
annual report.
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Pennsylvania Game News - August 2020

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