Working Paper 118 · Herd & HarvestPennsylvania · Black bear · 2024 harvest
Pennsylvania Bear Hunting in 2024: How the Harvest Split Across Seasons
FDR Research Desk · Published Sources: State wildlife-agency public records and FDR analysis
Comparing season segments, opening-day harvest and Wildlife Management Units. This paper separates historical harvest composition, license-based rates and the reporting limits that matter when comparing hunts.
Every figure below comes from the Pennsylvania Game Commission's black bear harvest and population monitoring job report. It covers 1 July 2024 to 30 June 2025 and is dated 30 June 2025. Dates are 2024 history.
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License success
Hunters bought 201,280 bear licenses, and the report counts 2,642 bears. It puts hunter success at about 1.3 percent, or 1 in 76 license buyers. That is a license-based statewide rate, not a measure of hunter-days.
In 2024, bear licenses were unlimited. The bag limit was one bear per licensed hunter across all seasons combined.
This is a statewide rate per license buyer. It is not a rate for any Wildlife Management Unit (WMU). It is not a rate per day hunted, and it is not the harvest rate on ear-tagged bears.
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Harvest by season
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| Season | 2024 dates (Table 4) | Length in days (Table 4) | Bears | Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Early | 21 Sep to 29 Nov | 62 | 4 | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| Archery | 19 Oct to 9 Nov | 19 | 756 | 186 | 39 | 50 |
| Muzzleloader and special firearms | 24 Oct to 26 Oct | 3 | 634 | 209 | 223 | 202 |
| General | 23 Nov to 26 Nov | 4 | 823 | 490 | 176 | 102 |
| Extended | 30 Nov to 14 Dec | 14 | 425 | 155 | 59 | 56 |
The season counts sum to 2,642. The day counts are those printed by PGC. They are not inclusive calendar-day spans: early, archery and extended date ranges span more calendar days than their printed lengths, and early and extended dates vary by unit. This article does not reconstruct an explanation for the archery difference. The table counts bears checked, not hunter effort. It cannot compare opportunity per hunter-day.
The extended season varied by location. It ran 30 November to 7 December in WMUs 3A, 3B, 3C, 3D, 4C, 4E and 5A, and 30 November to 14 December in WMUs 2B, 5B, 5C and 5D.
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The early season covered four WMUs
The report's methods describe the 2024 early season as open only in WMUs 2B, 5B, 5C and 5D. It ran 21 September to 29 November in 2B, 5C and 5D, and 5 October to 22 November in 5B.
Table 5 places the early season's four bears in 5B (1) and 5C (3). Those four units together produced 21 bears across all seasons in 2024. The early-season total reflects a small part of the state. It should not be compared directly with statewide seasons.
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General season: most bears on day one
Of the 823 general-season bears:
- 490 were checked on the first day, or 59.5 percent.
- 768 were checked in the first three days, or 93.3 percent.
- The remaining 55 are derived by subtracting the first three days from the general-season total.
These shares are arithmetic on the day counts, not a report forecast.
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Archery and muzzleloader followed different patterns
The muzzleloader and special firearms season had no opening-day spike. Its three days produced 209, 223 and 202 bears, which together make the whole 634. The report says this season was shortened to three days in 2024 because it was effective at harvesting adult female bears.
Archery's first three days produced 275 of 756 bears, or 36.4 percent. Most 2024 archery bears were checked after day three.
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Tagged-bear harvest rates
These rates answer a different question: what share of marked bears hunters removed.
PGC captured and tagged 744 bears in 2024. The abstract says 728 were available for harvest. The results section and Table 2 use 727 for the statewide estimate, after 16 died before the fall seasons and one died during the early seasons.
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| Measure | 2024 rate |
|---|---|
| Archery, 30 of 727 tagged bears | 4.1% |
| Muzzleloader and special firearms, 33 of 697 | 4.7% |
| General season | 4.1% |
| Area open to extended hunting, total, all seasons | 13.6% |
| Mean across WMUs open to extended hunting, excluding 2B, 4E, 5B, 5C and 5D | 11.7% |
The text calls 13.6 percent the total rate and 11.7 percent the mean, while Table 4's footnote labels the 13.6 figure a mean WMU rate. Both extended-area figures combine all seasons. Neither is an extended-season-only rate.
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Three WMUs, different measures
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| WMU | Area (sq mi) | Total harvest | Harvest per 10 sq mi | Tagged bears | Tagged harvest rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2G | 4,114 | 476 | 1.2 | 117 | 0.09 |
| 2D | 2,487 | 173 | 0.7 | 35 | 0.23 |
| 3D | 2,103 | 287 | 1.4 | 89 | 0.12 |
WMU 2G produced more harvest per area than 2D but removed a smaller share of its tagged bears. WMU 3D's total was down 57 percent from 2023.
Harvest per area and tagged-bear harvest rate measure different things. The tagged rates in this table are proportions, so 0.09 means 9 percent. None of them is a forecast for a particular stand.
Source limit: day shares are derived from one year's check counts. License success, tagged-bear rates and WMU density use different denominators and are not interchangeable.
NOTES AND SOURCES
- Pennsylvania Game Commission harvest report. The source is linked in the article body. Retrieved October 8, 2026.
- MEASURED labels refer to agency-reported registrations and license counts. Food-survey indices are SAMPLED. Percentages recomputed from reported counts are DERIVED. Population estimates are agency models, not complete counts. Denominators and reporting years remain specific to each comparison.
Fully Drawn Research is an independent data analysis desk, not affiliated with any state wildlife agency, transportation agency, mapping provider or outfitter. Fully Drawn Research analysis of public agency reports. Historical harvest results describe the reporting scope stated in each source. They do not forecast an individual hunt. Check the agency’s current regulations before hunting.
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