Outdoors category

Deer found in 10 of Pittsburgh’s parks will be in the sights of 65 bow hunters as the Department of Public Safety expands the city’s controlled management program. The hunt started over the weekend and will continue for the next few months. City officials in 2023 approved the limited hunting...

Pennsylvania hunting license sales peaked in the early 1980s. Since then, there have been ebbs and flows, but overall the state has seen a slow, fairly steady decline in the number of licenses issued, according to data from the Pennsylvania Game Commission. Two members of the Youngwood Sportsmen’s Association are...

A new 266-acre plot in Indiana Township is set to join State Game Lands 203. The property, located directly adjacent to Emmerling Community Park, hosts about 1 mile of the Rachel Carson Trail near Deer Creek. Initially acquired by the Allegheny Land Trust in March, the plot expands Game Lands...

A constant livestream in the heart of Pennsylvania’s elk country has restarted as the species begins its mating season, called the elk rut. The Pennsylvania Game Commission announced Friday it had powered up its video and audio stream of an area near Elk State Forest and State Gamelands 311 for...

MADISON, Wis. — A very rare and apparently very confused subtropical wood stork somehow found its way to the wilds of Wisconsin. A hunter scouting for deer first sighted the bird Sunday in a remote section of the Mud Lake Wildlife Area in Columbia County, about 35 miles northeast of...

After the Pennsylvania Game Commission added 10 new Sundays to this year’s hunting season on Monday, local sportsmen say they’re gearing up for more time in the woods come September. The commission voted to instruct its executive director to open up 10 Sundays for hunting starting Sept. 14 and ending...

The surefire way to know whether it’s a sweat bee or a corn fly buzzing around is if it stings. The halictid bee stings, but the corn fly, also called a hover fly, does not. “They’re mimics of bees, just annoying as all get-out,” said Michael Skvarla, a Penn State...

Pennsylvania hunters can now spend 13 consecutive Sundays in the woods this fall. In a unanimous decision at its Monday meeting, the Pennsylvania Game Commission voted to instruct its executive director to open up 10 Sundays for hunting starting Sept. 14 and ending Dec. 7. That’s in addition to the...

Hunters could get up to 10 additional Sundays to hunt this fall under a proposal going before the Pennsylvania Game Commission’s board of commissioners on Monday. The new dates are being proposed by the agency after Gov. Josh Shapiro signed a law earlier this month fully repealing the longstanding ban...

Hunters across the state soon could find themselves afield — legally — on almost any Sunday. Gov. Josh Shapiro on Wednesday signed a bill that lifts the state’s age-old ban on Sunday hunting, opening the door for the Pennsylvania Game Commission to build hunting seasons that include Sundays. “The Pennsylvania...

A state bill that would repeal Pennsylvania’s ban on Sunday hunting is headed to the House for a vote after the Senate passed it Thursday. Allegheny County Sportsmen’s League President Klint Macro said members of the group have been in favor of opening up hunting on Sundays for decades. He...

A bill to fully repeal Pennsylvania’s ban on Sunday hunting passed the state Senate on Thursday. The proposal, House Bill 1431, gained approval June 11 in the state House of Representatives. However, a provision to allow the use of natural deer urine as an attractant was amended in the Senate...

SANTA FE, N.M. — The Trump administration plans to rescind a nearly quarter-century-old rule that blocked logging on national forest lands, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins announced Monday. The so-called roadless rule adopted in the last days of Bill Clinton’s presidency in 2001 long has chafed Republican lawmakers, especially in the...

It’s that time of year again — hunting licenses will go on sale starting next week, the Pennsylvania Game Commission announced. On Monday, hunting and furtaker licenses for the 2025-26 season will be available for purchase. Antlerless deer licenses can be purchased when general license sales open per usual, but...

GARDNERS, Pa. — Sam Cooper had just trekked 7 miles through a rain-sodden stretch of the Appalachian Trail when he sat down outside a little country store in Pennsylvania to take on its ice cream challenge. Nearly 40 minutes and 2,500 calories later, the dairy farmer from Chapel Hill, Tennessee,...

Pennsylvania naturalists are keeping an eye on a disease that has been killing beech trees in the eastern U.S. for more than a decade, but has begun spreading more rapidly in the past three years. Beech leaf disease is believed to be caused by a particular type of nematode, which...

Six Canada geese, including two who lived at Twin Lakes Park, have been treated in recent days at a Youngwood wildlife rehabilitation organization for injuries related to discarded fishing line. The severe injuries are typically the result of fishing line being wrapped tightly around their legs, said Beth Shoaf, executive...

It will be decades before three people convicted of poaching 19 white-tailed deer in Somerset County over a two-month span in 2020 are allowed to hunt again, according to the Pennsylvania Game Commission. Although authorities were able to tie 19 poached deer to the three suspects, they said they believe...

In the summer of 2013, a state wildlife officer confronted a member of the Pitch Pine Hunting Club, accusing him of feeding bears outside a house on the club’s property. Wildlife Officer Mark Gritzer told club member Jon Mikesell that he had been watching Mikesell and his guests for several...

To an untrained eye, the five Gateway students working their way around a shooting arc at the Trafford Sportsmen’s Club are simply taking aim and trying their best to target the clay pigeons shooting across their field of vision. But Mike Buvalla, coach of the newly formed Gateway Skeet Club,...

The first day of trout season has always been a big deal for the Gombosh family. It became more so after 15-year-old Joey Gombosh fell ill and died in 1995 after he returned from a fishing outing at Northmoreland Park. “This keeps his memory alive,” said Bob Gombosh, who along...

Isaac Versaw calls trout season the “money months.” The 19-year-old works at Allegheny Angler in Tarentum, a one-stop shop for licenses, bait, tackle, rods and reels of all kinds. He said the shop, which is next to the Tarentum Bridge about a block from the Allegheny River, attracts a special...

The 1818 Great Crossings Bridge exposed last fall during an extended drought is back under water at the Youghiogheny River Lake in Somerset County. The historic structure dropped out of sight once more Dec. 13, as the lake was replenished with water. “The lake (water level) has come up a...