Here's how to legally track a deer after dark in Pa. [column]

How easy is it to get permission from the Pennsylvania Game Commission to track a deer after dark?

So easy, a 56-year-old, technologically-challenged bowhunter did it.

Earlier this year, I wrote a few s focused on Pennsylvania's rules for tracking game after dark.

Technically, it's illegal – something I never knew, despite hunting here for the last 35 years. And according to an informal survey I ran in one of the s, I was hardly alone among Pennsylvania hunters who didn't know that rule.

Hunting for deer and most other game – except predators – is allowed in Pennsylvania from a half hour before sunrise until a half hour after sunset.

In between those times, it's illegal to hunt.

In the state's Game & Wildlife Code, "tracking" is listed under the definition of "hunting." So legally, tracking is hunting, and hunting after dark is illegal.

Always has been.

I will admit right here that I violated that rule dozens of times over the past four decades. So has every single hunter I know.

We didn't know it was illegal.

How did so many of us not know this rule?

READ: The 5 stages of the hunter: How I've grown as a sportsman over the years

Until two years ago, it was never listed in the digest of hunting rules and regulations that's given out when a hunter buys a hunting license.

It's stated in the Game & Wildlife Code, but that's a lengthy legal document that's not part of the hunting digest.

The digest is a summary of the law, and the digest did not include the full, legal definition of "hunting."

It still doesn't.

In 2022, the Game Commission added to the digest for the first time a line that states hunters who need to track wounded game after legal hunting hours, or on closed hunting days – think Sundays – must first notify the Game Commission by calling the Central Dispatch Center.

The digest has included that information every year since, and I never noticed it. Apparently, others didn't notice it as well.

Now in my reporting on this rule, Game Commission spokesman Travis Lau said, "this is a technical violation of the law that isn't aggressively prosecuted by the agency."

He added that he wasn't aware of an unarmed hunter tracking an animal after dark ever being cited for that infraction.

The tracking rule came into the news earlier this year following a Game Commission sting operation on the Welsh Mountain during the 2023 firearms deer season.

The sting was set up to nab a Downingtown man who had been advertising his services in which he uses a drone with thermal imaging to help hunters locate wounded/dead big game.

The Game Commission announced that's illegal because a drone is an electronic device that's not allowed under current law – update on that at the end of this .

The agency also announced the drone was used for tracking a deer after dark, which also is illegal.

It was in reporting that case that I learned about the tracking after dark rule.

Hunt long enough, and you'll find yourself in the very situation I found myself in the evening of Oct. 12.

READ: Sunday hunting in Pa. one step closer following House Game & Fisheries Committee vote

It was a sunny, warm Saturday in the early phase of Pennsylvania's archery deer season, and I headed out around 2:30 p.m. to a spot where I hunt in Chester County.

I was in my stand early, expecting some early-evening movement by a group of does heading from a bedding thicket to a grass field.

The land managers for this property grant me permission to hunt there provided I shoot some does, and so I was hoping to get that done on this night.

Sure enough, at 5:50 p.m., three antlerless deer meandered out of the thicket on a trail that would take them through an opening 25 yards in front of me.

When one of the two bigger does stopped broadside, I drew my bow, took aim and released the arrow.

The shot looked good, but in two hops, the doe disappeared into a thicket, so I didn't see it fall.

At 6:45, I climbed down, packed up my gear and went to the spot where the deer was standing when I shot.

I found my arrow and some blood, but I didn't take up the track right away.

One of the nuances of bowhunting is that it can take a little or a long time for a deer/bear/elk to expire after being shot with an arrow.

Take up the trail of a shot animal too quickly, and you could cause it to run off, making tracking and recovery more difficult.

The safest course of action when you don't actually see the animal fall is to wait. How long depends on where you hit the animal.

Since I only live about two miles away from where I was hunting last Saturday, I decided to carry my stand and my bow out of the field, and drive home to pick up my deer cart to haul the deer out of the woods.

By the time I headed back to my hunting spot, it was dark, and about 35 minutes after the end of the legal hunting day at 6:54 p.m.

So on the drive back to retrieve my deer, I called the Game Commission's Central Dispatch number – 833-742-4868.

The Game Commission is a law enforcement agency, and the dispatch center operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

A dispatcher answered my call, and I gave my name and said I needed to track a deer after dark in Chester County.

The dispatcher said I was "good to go," but added that if I came upon the deer and it was still alive, I should call back.

READ: What to know as Pa. hunting season kicks into full gear

Lau said that if I had found the deer alive and called dispatch a second time, an incident report could have been created, and if a Game Warden was available to respond, the officer could have been dispatched to put down the deer.

As it was, I only tracked the deer for about 5 minutes, before I found it laying dead basically just beyond the last spot where I saw it right after the shot.

And that was it.

After 35 years of hunting in Pennsylvania, I legally tracked a deer after dark for the first time.

So what's the purpose of calling the Game Commission?

"The purpose of calling the PGC to request authorization to track is to avoid such conduct being treated as unlawful hunting activity, such as hunting after hours, using lights, etc.," Lau said.

As for the law regarding using drones to find wounded/dead game, state Sen. Jarrett Coleman, who serves parts of Bucks and Lehigh counties, in September introduced Senate Bill 1312, which seeks to make drones a legal motorized vehicle for hunting.

Under current law, using a motorized vehicle to hunt is illegal.

Coleman's bill would make an exception for using "a small unmanned aircraft system if the operator has been issued a wildlife recovery permit granted by the (Game) Commission and the small unmanned aircraft is used solely by the permittee for the recovery of harvested wildlife when no firearms or implement of taking is possessed by any participant involved in the recovery," the bill states.

It also calls for the creation of the wildlife recovery permit, which would cost $100 for people using drones to recover game as a commercial venture, or $5 for those using drones for their own use.

"One of the many challenges facing Pennsylvania hunters is the tracking and recovery of downed game," Coleman wrote in a memo announcing his legislation earlier this year.

"The advancement of unmanned drones has created an opportunity to use technology to aid in that recovery process."

Senate Bill 1312 has been referred to the Senate Game & Fisheries Committee, but is not listed yet for consideration.

If it isn't approved by the full Senate and House, and signed by the governor, by the end of the year, it will die, and Coleman would have to reintroduce it in the next Legislative session, which starts Jan. 1, 2025.