Cold temperatures on the Nov. 18 opening day of bear season made Bernie Okuniewski think twice about venturing into the woods.
The Larksville resident stayed home in the morning until a call from his son, AnDrew, convinced him to go out in the afternoon.
It’s a good thing he did.
Later in the day, Okuniewski harvested his first Pennsylvania black bear while hunting with his son in Carbon County. He has taken a couple of bears in Canada in the past, but this harvest was different.
“I never shot black bear in Pennsylvania before, so I was pretty excited,” he said. “It was nice to get one in the Pocono mountains with my son.”
After taking his bear to the Pennsylvania Game Commission check station in Luzerne County, Okuniewski learned his bruin had an estimated live weight of 280 pounds. It was the second bear he saw that day — the first offered no shot — and he plans on getting it mounted.
While plenty of other bear hunters were successful this year, the overall harvest is behind last year’s pace.
During the 2022 slate of bear season (archery/muzzleloader, statewide firearms and extended season), the total harvest was 3,170. That was down from 3,621 in 2021, but still enough to rank the harvest as the 14th largest.
Pennsylvania’s all-time best bear season came in 2019, when hunters harvested 4,653.
According to real-time harvest data from the Game Commission this year, hunters have taken 2,685 bears as of Nov. 29, while in some areas of the state the extended season remains open until Dec. 9.
Although the harvest of 1,071 from this year’s four-day statewide firearms season topped the total of 1,051 taken during the same span in 2022, the take was down during other segments. In 2022, during the archery/muzzleloader seasons combined, hunters harvested 1,449 bears. This year the unofficial total was 1,222.
During the record harvest of 2019, the first year of the early muzzleloader season accounted for 1,000 bears, along with 340 taken during the special firearms season and 561 in the archery season for a total of 1,901.
Emily Carrollo, the Game Commission’s Black Bear Program specialist, has an idea as to why this year’s early season harvest — especially muzzleloader — dropped.
“I suspect the statewide muzzleloader harvest is a little down because the opening weekend for the statewide early season was pretty miserable weather-wise, with heavy, cold rain occurring throughout most of the day,” she said.
The majority of this year’s bear harvest occurred in the north-central and northeastern parts of the state. Very few bears were taken in the southeast, with none harvested in Lancaster and York counties so far, which isn’t unusual. Last year, only two bears were taken in York, and none in Lancaster.
Tioga County led all counties this year in total harvest with 165 (as of Nov. 29), followed by Lycoming (159), Potter (135) and Bradford (123).
The heaviest bear taken weighed 691 pounds from Pike County, and there were five bears in the harvest topping the 600-pound mark. The heaviest bear ever taken in Pennsylvania was an 875-pounder harvested in 2010 in Pike County.
The agency estimates Pennsylvania’s bear population to be around 15,000, and between 1.5% and 2.5% of bear license holders get a bear in any given year.
The Game Commission recently surveyed about 2,100 bear hunters about their experiences, habits and more. One question centered on their level of success.
“Most hunters, 43%, only ever harvested one bear,” Carrollo said. “But 11% harvested five or more bears in their lifetime, and 1.5% harvested more than 10 bears in their lifetime.
“And the average number of bears harvested per hunter in a lifetime was 1.5.”
Now that he has harvested one Pennsylvania black bear, Okuniewski intends on trying for a second next year. He thinks there are plenty of bears where he hunts in Carbon County.
“I saw two bears in just under two hours of hunting, and I never saw two bears in the same day before,” he said. “I know some other hunters got bears during the firearms season and the extended season, and my son and I heard some shooting while we were out on opening day.”
