If you have any doubt what and why the PGC was created, you better read this.
02-01-2009, 01:06 PM
#1
Typical Buck
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Join Date: Jan 2009
Location: Westmoreland County PA.
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If you have any doubt what and why the PGC was created, you better read this.
I already have this posted in another thread and I'm going to repost it in this one. If you have any doubt what and why the PGC was created, you better read this. Pay particular attention as you read paragraph three. This was taken from our Pennsylvania State Historical Archives. Or we can let the PA WILDLIFE ALLIANCE run the show.
"In 1890, the game had practically disappeared from our state. "We had but few game laws and those were supposed to be enforced by township constables, most of whom were politicians willing to trade with their friends the lives of our beasts and birds in exchange for votes." That year, Phillips and other sportsmen formed the Pennsylvania Sportsmen's Association to press for government protection of the state's disappearing wildlife. In 1895, the Pennsylvania Game Commission was born.
Elected governor in 1902, Samuel Pennypacker supported Progressive era reforms...
Two years later the General Assembly approved a new package of game laws to protect endangered populations of deer, waterfowl and other game birds. The Commission then appointed the state's first game protectors and empowered constables to start enforcing those laws. This was no easy task, for according to Game Commissioner Joseph Kalbus, Pennsylvania's hunters, "appeared to think they had... an inherent right to destroy game and birds at pleasure." Pennsylvanians, like other Americans, resisted state efforts to limit a hunter's right to use his gun. Regulating hunting was "a bloody process" in which fourteen game protection agents were shot at and three killed in 1906 alone.
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To restore the populations of valuable wildlife, Governor Samuel Pennypacker authorized the establishment of "game preserves" in the state forests for the protection of deer, wild turkey, grouse, woodcock andnon gameanimals in 1905. On 2,000 acres in the Young Women's Creek Reserve in Clinton -- the first forest lands purchased by the Commonwealth back in 1898 -- the Game Commission set up its first game preserve. By 1910, the Game Commission was winning praise across the nation for its restocking and management of the state's growing deer herd. To fund more preserves, the Commission asked the state legislature to pass a law requiring each hunter to pay a dollar for a license to hunt, a measure that the state's sportsmen bitterly opposed. Passed in 1913, the Resident Hunter's License Law provided the Commonwealth money to purchase and maintain its public game preserves, to protect endangered wildlife and to restore species native to the state. Credit: Pennsylvania State Archives [/align][/align]
