Waterfowlers and wildlife managers are looking into whether it makes sense to better educate duck and goose hunters before they go afield.
Waterfowl hunting at Pymatuning Wildlife Management Area in Crawford County may be changing.
Hunter ethics – often tied to lack of knowledge – are the reason.
The Pennsylvania Game Commission has offered limited, controlled goose and duck hunts at Pymatuning for decades. Up to 85 hunters, total, are allowed on two areas at any one time.
It’s a popular hunt, said Jerry Bish, land management supervisor in the commission’s northwest region office. Hunters chosen by lottery drawing, he said, get the opportunity to hunt from established blinds in areas rich with birds.
“It does get a lot of people interested in waterfowl hunting,” Bish said.
It’s not without problems, though, he added.
Namely, “skyblasting” is an issue, said commission president Brian Hoover. Hunters – some newcomers, some more experienced – get overly excited and start shooting at birds long before they’re in range.
“It’s not that they kill ducks. It’s that they shoot at them at 200 yards and scare them all off,” said commissioner Jim Daley of Cranberry.
That’s not unique to Pymatuning, Bish said. It happens all over the state.
At Pymatuning, though, there are real consequences.
“That one day can kill an area to the point that ducks don’t come back in there again,” Bish added.
Hunters often leave disappointed, he said. And he understands why.
He’d also like to change that.
“The Game Commission provides thousands and thousands of acres to hunt waterfowl in this state. I would like to see, when you come to Pyamtuning, this be a special place,” Bish said. “This would be where people behave and you do well and you see lots of birds and have a great time.”
Mandatory training might be the answer, some believe.
Whistling Wings is a group made up of all of the state’s major waterfowl organizations – the Northwestern Pennsylvania Duck Hunters Association, Ducks Unlimited, Delta Waterfowl, Susquehanna River Waterfowlers Association and Federation of Sportsmen’s Clubs — and all of its natural resource agencies. Its leaders have indicated a willingness to develop a waterfowl hunter training course, Bish said. It would focus on duck identification, waterfowl ethics, hunting techniques and more.
The question is whether to require hunters to complete the course before being allowed to hunt at Pymatuning.
The commission appears to be leaning that way.
The idea is not unprecedented, Hoover said. A number of other states require their duck hunters to go through training.
The commission does not. Staff meets with hunters before they go into blinds, but it’s early in the morning, in the dark, when everyone’s eager to get started, Bish said. It’s a situation “not conducive to listening.”
Problems often result. The wrong birds are sometimes killed, for example, said Rich Cramer, director of the commission’s northwest region office.
“We explain to them that sandhill cranes frequent the area. And they shoot sandhill cranes almost every day,” he noted.
Whistling Wings produced some posters and that address some of those issues, Bish said. But the feeling is that more – i.e. a training course – needs to be done.
“There’s a need, is I guess what I’m saying,” he said.
The course – which has yet to be drawn up – would likely last half a day, he said.
Up to 6,000 people annually apply to hunt from one of Pymatuning’s blinds. So a course requirement would create a backlog initially, Hoover admitted.
But hunters would only need to pass it once in their lifetime, so that congestion would end pretty quickly, he believes.
There are pros and cons to the notion, said board member Charlie Fox of Bradford County.
“In some ways we try to reduce barriers. Now are we creating barriers?” he asked.
Perhaps, said commissioner Tim Layton of Windber. But he added that the need to educate hunters and solve the problems at Pymatuning outweigh that, especially in regards to novice waterfowlers. He believes the board will support a class requirement.
Meanwhile, the commission may institute another change at Pymatuning.
Right now, there’s no fee to apply for a waterfowl blind. Hoover, though, said the commission should start charging hunters $10 – much like it does with elk hunters wanting to enter the license lottery – to cover its costs.
Most other commissioners at the board’s recent work group meeting seemed to support that idea.
Both the training course and application fee could also apply to the commission’s Middle Creek Wildlife Management Area, Hoover noted.
Decisions on where to go with all this will likely come in spring. Cramer said the intent is to come back to the commission board in April with a formal proposal.
There’s a lot to think about before then, Bish said.
“I’m certainly not in a position to make any recommendations to you,” he said. “But we will take a look at it.”
