The Sportsman's Corner

A month ago, I wrote that the Unified Sportsmen of Pennsylvania (USP) was continuing to back the research of Dr. Frank Bastian and that Bastian's work needs financial support.

When the PA Department of Agriculture recently awarded $1 million in funding for CWD research in three chunks, Bastian's group did not receive any money. Instead, two of the three awards went to researchers associated with the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine, which has entered a working relationship with the Pennsylvania Game Commission (PGC) to combat diseases in animals, including CWD.

State Rep. Dave Maloney (R, Berks) was quoted in the March 27 issue of "Pennsylvania Outdoor News" as saying at a recent meeting of the House Game and Fisheries Committee that he was the one who got the million-dollar pool authorized. He said he did it specifically so that Bastian's North American CWD Project would get funding. "That it didn't is a sore disappointment," he said.

The "Pennsylvania Outdoor News" article went on to report that those making the grant said Bastian's organization was late in submitting its application for money. Bastian's group refuted this, noting that it filed its application 36 hours prior to the deadline.

The article went on to quote Bryan Burhans, Executive Director of the PGC, as saying that the PGC is not looking to fund Dr. Bastian because it (PGC) "has only so much money to spend on wasting disease and wants to allocate it wisely." The PGC is looking where the majority of science lies, "to spend our resources to try to deal with the disease."

On another front, "Estella, the fortune teller" was correct when she told me that the PGC would claim a kill of more than 350,000 deer for 2019. In fact, the PGC claimed a harvest of 374,690 animals. In its press releases, the PGC did not note that this number essentially tripled the number of deer reported by hunters to the commission. Of this number, the PGC reported an incredible kill of 163,750 bucks. Of these, 74,190 were reportedly taken by archery hunters. Of the bow-killed bucks, only 1680 were taken in Wildlife Management Area 4A, which includes the Cove. Archers in WMA 4A were reported to have killed 1696 antlerless deer from the statewide archery total of 71,178.

Estella was also correct in predicting that the PGC would open the rifle deer season on Saturday again this year and that the Sunday following would be a deer-hunting day, despite a 2/3 majority of hunters preferring a Monday opener.