Pennsylvania Bear Hunting

[iowabuck]

Hi all,
Had a bear hunt set up for PA and it fell thru. Was originally going to trade hunts with a guy, since that's not happening I'm still looking to hunt one, and could trade for an Iowa deer hunt if interested. Anyone out there hunting any big bears in the PA area?

 

[Magnum Sherpa]

The most successful way to hunt them is to do organized drives (up to 25 people are legally allowed to participate in a drive). Was the guy that you were going to trade with going to let you be a stander on drives, or were you going to sit somewhere? If you aren't going to be in on drives, in my opinion there really isn't any reason to trade a hunt with someone - you could do it just as well on your own. Bears travel large distances there, especially once the bear hunters hit the woods. The best counties are in the northcentral and northeastern parts of the state. Lycoming county in northcentral PA almost always leads in overall bear harvest. There is plenty of public land (both state forest and state game lands) to hunt. Just keep in mind that overall success rates are low, somewhere between 3 and 5% if you take all hunters into account. Of course there are some hunters I know who would get a bear every few years. Good luck and let me know if you have any questions. I don't live in PA anymore, but I still get back every other year or so to hunt.

 

[iowabuck]

Thank-you hope I can get a Pennsylvania giant some year

 

[tim629]

PA bear hunting is about as Magnum Sherpa said. the past few years you get more people figuring out what group does what drive on the opening day, so our group has had to change up the traditional first drive.

there are groups that habitually get at least a bear if not multiples but always a gamble, also a gamble if it's going to be this spring's cub or one of the bruisers. ask some very specific questions about whatever group you end up hunting with, some will pound the mountains all day, others push standing corn fields & brush, both are successful but offer a different hunting experience. with the season opening on a saturday it's almost harder to get people for the second and third day of the season than it used to be and the 4th day is now a lot slower and usually a day I go pheasant hunting (with a rifle in the truck just in case)

 

[PAhunter]

If you really want to try it, you don't have to be part of a group, and you don't have to try to pot hunt off of other folks' drives. As Sherpa said, in the northcentral part of the state where bear populations are highest, public land is plentiful, and the bears live on the public just as much as the private.

I believe I have hunted bears a total of eight or nine seasons in PA. Most of those years I hunted either one or two days. I took three bears in those 8-9 years, but that is beating the average success rate by a pretty wide margin (and I attribute that almost entirely to luck, in my case). First time out, I was 14 and hunted with one of those groups of 25, driving off mile-long steep-sided mountains, crawling through mountain laurel and over rocks and logs. Our group killed one bear, but that was back in the late 80's when bear numbers were much lower. Fast forward to '99 and I hunted public land out of a small camp in northcentral PA. I still hunted until lunch time, sat and ate a sandwich, got up and resumed still hunting for about 5 minutes before a big bear came hustling through on the steep slope below me. He dressed 394#, and missed all-time B&C by 1/2".

Two years later I organized 9-10 hunters to do some drives on public land close to where I live in central PA. I kicked up a big bear inside 10 yards in the nastiest briar thicket I could imagine, with no chance for a shot. Another in our party superficially wounded it, and we spent a couple of hours trying to find it. At one point as we were regrouping to move on, I was trying to flag down a disoriented party member when our group had a bear break cover on the hill above them. Several shots were fired, the bear took off, and most of the group hurried up the trail to try to see where it went. I stepped out of the cover, the last member of our group began to point out where the bear had been, and the bear took off again, 100 yards away. I shouldered the rifle, fired, and he somersaulted. Before we headed up to the bear, we had group members who were thoroughly convinced that the bear weighed 400# if he weighed even 10. I was pretty sure he was small. Sure enough, we found one husky 100# cub piled up.

I hunted NC PA for the next three years without a bear sighting, then took one more in 2008, again on public land and near the end of a long day of still hunting. I could hear a group doing a drive about 1/2 mile away, but I was nowhere near the drivers or standers. As I worked my way towards the truck, a bear came hurrying through the laurel, angling past me. When she stopped at 90 yards, I dumped her. She was a yearling and dressed 87#.

Haven't hunted bears since, but my son is 12 (minimum age to hunt bears in PA) this year, and is fired up to try to get a bear, so I'll be back at it.

All that rambling to demonstrate that yes, I was fortunate enough to kill one good bear in PA, but the odds of pulling that off in one trip to PA from Iowa are not very high, even if I (or another resident) does quite a bit of scouting before you get here. If on the other hand, any bear at all would make you happy, then I don't think the odds for success are insurmountable. The bear population seems to just keep growing and with our very short season, we need a pretty strong percentage of hunters to be willing to shoot the average 100-250# bears or there is no way we can hope to manage the population. All three of my bears were taken while they were moving away from other hunters, but none were actually taken on an organized drive.

Finally, the one thing that would increase your odds almost exponentially would be if you get access to hunt standing corn in good bear country.

Good luck if you decide to head to PA this fall!