I believe most folks would agree that the days seem to go by more quickly with the passage of time. Often, before we realize it, days seem to slip by, weeks click away more rapidly, and months seem to fly off the calendar. Where does the time go? So before hunting season seems to slip up on us, it might be a good time to make your plans for this coming hunting season and mark your calendars to firm up the dates you hope to spend afield pursuing your favorite quarry.

At the end of April, the Pennsylvania Board of Game Commissioners met and gave final approval to the 2023-24 hunting and trapping seasons and bag limits. Overall there were not many sweeping or substantive changes from the previous year.

One major shift that applies to our area is that WMU (Wildlife Management Unit) 2H has been eliminated and combined with WMU 2G. WMU 2G now extends westerly to include the remainder of Cameron County and major portions of Elk and McKean Counties.

The seasons and bag limits for white-tailed deer will continue with a Saturday opener to the firearm deer season. There has been much back-and-forth discussion about possibly returning to the old traditional Monday opener, but for now, it will remain as Saturday for the first day of the firearm deer season. The Commissioners referred to data showing that the move to the Saturday opener was followed by increased license sales by hunters ages 18 to 34 and female hunters.

The amount of antlerless license sales is always a point of discussion among hunters, and for this coming season, the announced number of 1,095,000 is up from the 948,000 allocated for the 2022-23 season. As to our home WMU of 2G, allocations will be 35,000, which is up from last year’s figure of 31,000.

For your planning purposes, hunting licenses will be available online this year for the first time and will go on sale beginning June 26th. You will be able on that same day to purchase an antlerless license. Non-residents of Pennsylvania must wait until July 10th to purchase an antlerless license.

For those of you who make an effort to share our hunting heritage by mentoring either a youth hunter or adult hunter, there is an addition to the opportunities for this coming fall. The board has approved a measure that makes all mentored hunters, including mentored adults, eligible to participate in the October special firearms season for antlerless deer and bears.

If you are planning on mentoring a new hunter sometime this coming fall, it would be very beneficial to do some preliminary legwork now.

If you have a place to hunt in mind already and have permission to hunt there, you are already set. But, if you need to acquire permission to hunt at a new location, it would be wise to make inroads over the coming months. Take the mentored hunter to meet the landowner and ask if there are any chores that the landowner needs help with. The gift to the landowner of a homemade pie or cake or the offering to help cut and split some firewood will go a long way to cementing a long-term relationship and ensuring future hunting opportunities.

Offering to do some coyote hunting over the summer would also please most landowners and further develop a lasting friendship.

Meanwhile, we have now moved into all-day hunting for spring gobblers, with legal shooting hours running from ½ hour before sunrise to ½ hour after sunset. Whether you are seeking to fill your second tag or are still trying to secure the first bird of the season, there is still plenty of time before the closing date of Tuesday, May 30th. Patience remains a key factor, and especially after several weeks already of hunters interrupting turkeys’ normal routines, being patient is even more important.

Good Luck!