Hunters that won Pennsylvania lottery for elk licenses harvest 118 this fall and winter
BENEZETTE — About 82% of Pennsylvania elk hunters filled their tags this license year.
The Pennsylvania Game Commission awarded 144 licenses over three separate seasons and 118 elk were harvested by hunters in northcentral Pennsylvania. The number was evenly split with 59 bulls and 59 cows being shot.
The one-week long late hunting season ended Jan. 6 with 13 of the 17 bull hunters and 23 of the 29 cow elk hunters getting their deer.
In the general season — Oct. 30 to Nov. 4 — 29 of the 30 bull hunters and 31 of the 42 cow elk hunters were successful.
During the archery season — Sept. 16 to Sept. 30 — 17 of the 18 bull hunters and five of the eight cow elk hunters shot an animal.
“The success rates are on average,” Jeremy Banfield, elk biologist for the Game Commission, said Friday in a telephone interview.
The average success rate for cow hunters varies between 60-80% and bull success rates are in the 90s, he explained.
In Zone 2, no cows were killed during the general season, but the late season hunters were successful. In Zone 13, no bulls were killed in the late season.
“Every year it seems like there are one or two zones that people really struggle with,” Banfield said. "They can’t find the animals or can’t get on them if they can find them."
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He remembers one bull being larger than average that was taken during the first day of the general season in Zone 13. The elk had large palmated antlers.
“They are all nice,” Banfield said about the animals inspected at the check stations this license year.
The Game Commission tests each elk for a variety of diseases including Chronic Wasting Disease, and everything so far has come out negative or not detected. The test results from the late season are still being processed.
“I don’t expect anything different,” Banfield said.
The licenses are awarded by the Game Commission during a lottery each summer. The hunting seasons are designed to manage the size of the herd to prevent conflicts with agriculture fields, people and motorists.
Looking ahead to this fall’s hunting seasons, Banfield said the number of licenses will be determined after they perform aerial surveys in the coming weeks to determine the population of the free roaming large animals, "but in general it’s probably not going to be too far off from what it was this year.”
The agency estimates Pennsylvania has about 1,400 free roaming elk mostly living in Elk, Cameron, Clinton, Clearfield, Potter and Centre counties.
Brian Whipkey is the outdoors columnist for USA TODAY Network sites in Pennsylvania. Contact him at bwhipkey@gannett.com and sign up for our weekly Go Outdoors PA newsletter email on this website's homepage under your login name. Follow him on Facebook @whipkeyoutdoors, and Instagram at whipkeyoutdoors.
This article originally appeared on The Daily American: How many elk are there in Pennsylvania?
