PGC Trying To Help Bird Hunters

Pheasant populations do not fare well in this part of the state, due to predators, habitat conditions and the weather. The Game Commission will be out next week, stocking birds that hunters will pursue when the ringneck season opens next Saturday.

The Pa. Game Commission has taken several steps to assure that a higher percentage of ringnecked pheasants stocked for the 2006 season will be killed by hunters, rather than natural predators.

Pheasant season opens on Saturday, Oct. 21, and concludes

on Nov. 25. A late season runs Dec. 11-23 and Dec. 26-Feb. 3. The Game Commission will release about 8,500 pheasants in Cameron and nine other counties in this region next week.

Dennis Dusza, northcentral regional director, said the harvest rates by hunters will approach 50 percent. Local conditions are not conducive to natural pheasant reproduction, so the agency has refined its "put and take" system to cut the loss of birds to predators.

Among the stocking points next week will be the north end of Sinnemahoning State Park, near the Cameron/Potter County line; State Game Lands 61, off Rt. 155, six miles south of Port Allegany; Brandy

Camp area, off Rt. 219 in Elk County; Kattie Ritter Farm, two miles north of St. Marys on Glen Hazel Road; State Game Lands 64 near Phoenix Run Road, near Rt. 6 in Potter County.

The Game Commission conducted a pheasant harvest study that resulted in stocking changes. The agency releases birds as close to the season as personnel and equipment will allow.