New public hunting maps far better late than never

Christian Berg | Outdoors

August 26, 2008

It took almost five years, but it looks as if the Pennsylvania Game Commission is finally making good on a promise to produce a set of maps that shows the locations of private properties enrolled in the agency's public access programs.

The county-by-county digital maps -- which can be downloaded from the commission's Web site at http://www.pgc.state.pa.us -- have arrived just ahead of the fall hunting seasons and could be valuable tools for sportsmen looking for new places to explore.

Although the maps released last week do not include the names or contact information for individual landowners, they do pinpoint the locations of each property enrolled in the commission's Farm-Game, Forest-Game and Safety Zone programs. As of Aug. 5, the three programs comprised nearly 3.3 million acres statewide, the commission said.

Because participating landowners are required to post enrolled properties with the commission's public access signs, hunters using the maps should find it relatively easy to track down landowners and secure permission to hunt.

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The map legend also tells hunters whether a property has no hunting restrictions or if restrictions exist for either big game, small game, turkey or trapping.

''We're trying to make the best maps we can and offer the best information we can for sportsmen,'' said Mike Pruss, the commission's private lands section chief. ''It's been a massive effort, but we really want to make what has been somewhat of a stealth program into something sportsmen are aware of and use.''

Pruss said maps of each of the state's 67 counties have been updated and about two thirds have been finalized. Additional information will be added to the remaining maps over the next several months, though Pruss expects to complete the project by January. The agency may begin selling printed copies of the maps next year.

In addition to showing the locations of private properties enrolled in public access programs, each county map shows the locations of public hunting lands such as state game lands, state parks, state and federal forests and other large tracts of government-owned property open to public hunting.

Release of the new maps marks the culmination of a project that began in 2003 with the help of a grant from the National Shooting Sports Foundation, which contributed nearly $160,000.

The commission posted the first set of public access maps on its Web site in October 2006 but took them down in April 2007 after receiving numerous complaints about their accuracy.

Hunters said some properties listed on the maps were no longer open to hunting. Some had been removed from the programs, others had been sold and still others had been developed. The commission also received a number of complaints from participating landowners who were upset that their locations were posted on the Internet.

Commission officials later acknowledged their public access database used to create the maps was out of date. In some cases, it had been five years since anyone from the agency had spoken with cooperating landowners.

As a result, the commission launched a comprehensive effort to update its records and re-enroll each public access property. The commission also made participating landowners aware of the posting requirement and the fact that their locations would be included on public access maps.

The new set of maps is the result of that effort, during which roughly 700,000 acres were taken off the books.

A set of accurate maps with 3.3 million acres is worth a heck of a lot more than inaccurate maps with 4 million acres. The commission clearly dropped the ball the first time around, but should be commended for making a solid second effort.

As the old saying goes, better late than never.

cberg@mcall.com

610-778-2252

Morning Call wire services contributed to this report.

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New public hunting maps far better late than never

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