3 black bears bagged in Allegheny County during archery season

Three black bears were taken by archers in Allegheny County so far, according to the Pennsylvania Game Commission.

The black bears bagged in Allegheny County were in West Deer, Elizabeth and in the state game lands in Marshall and Franklin townships, said Zeb Campbell, game warden for Allegheny County.

While archery season for bear ended in most locations in the state on Nov. 7, the season was scheduled to conclude in Allegheny County on Friday. The PGC has longer bear seasons in Allegheny County and in some other parts of the state close to highly populated areas to control the bear population.

Starting Monday, there will be an extended bear season in Allegheny County and other parts of the state until Dec. 12.

On Tuesday, preliminary results on a live PGC black bear harvest webpage, tallied 3,133 bears taken during black bear archery, muzzleloader and special-sportsarms seasons. Last year’s record-setting harvest was 4,653.

In the region, bear harvests by county so far are: Allegheny 3; Armstrong 53; Butler 42; Westmoreland 29 and Somerset 60.

Only time will tell if there any bear harvest records are broken this year, said Joe Kosack, associate editor of PGC’s “Pennsylvania Game News.”

“Our biologists believe about there about 20,000 bears in the state and people bought a record number of bear tags,” Kosack said. “The pressure is there, the bears are there, who knows where we are going to end up, ”he said.

The Pennsylvania Game Commission sells approximately 170,000 bear tags each year, with roughly 3,000 to 4,000 of those tags ending up attached to their hunter’s take.

People can monitor the bear harvest in real time on a PGC webpage. The map is updated continually as hunters check their bears and the records are entered into the database.