HARRISBURG, Pa. (WHTM) — WHTM TV is reporting…Republican lawmakers in Harrisburg are opposed to Vaccine Passports and say they hope it has no shot in Pennsylvania. The passports are billed as a ticket to a sense of normalcy. It’s proof that you had your shot to get onto a plane, into a concert, Hershey Park or a Phillies game. Governor Tom Wolf isn’t pushing them but is generally supportive. “You used to have one when you traveled overseas it was part of your passport, it was a yellow card that showed what immunizations you got,” Wolf explained. “I would think that would be a fairly easy thing to do.”
Pa. Senator Kristin Phillips-Hill (R-York) is one of the Republican lawmakers opposing the idea. “We believe this is government overreach,” Phillips-Hill said. Phillips-Hill said she will get a vaccine, but hasn’t yet, and is pushing a bill prohibiting the Governor from requiring passports in Pa. “It will infringe on their right to privacy with regard to their medical information and it might discriminate against individuals who may not have been able to get a vaccine,” Phillips-Hill said. Another lawmaker with grave concerns, Rep. Kerry Benninghoff (R-Centre, Mifflin) said he has yet to be vaccinated, but when he is, doesn’t want that data on the information superhighway. “Who will then have access to that. Is that gonna go through the Google network, does it go through the Facebook network, what mega tech company is now gonna have your information?” Benninghoff said. He also worries that passport would have no expiration date.
HARRISBURG (TribLive) – The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review is reporting…Pennsylvania hunters killed an estimated 435,180 deer during the 2020-21 hunting seasons, the state game commission announced Friday. That topped the previous license year’s harvest of 389,431 by about 12%, the agency reported. In the past 21 years, since 1993, the state’s hunters have harvested more than 400,000 deer in a license year just 10 times. Twice during that period, deer harvests exceeded 500,000, first in 2000 and again in 2002, when the state’s overall deer harvest record of 517,529 was set, according to the agency.
The statewide buck harvest of 174,780 last season set a new record for bucks killed in the antler restrictions era. The buck harvest also increased 7% over the previous license year’s buck harvest of 163,240. “About a quarter of the state’s deer hunters took a buck in the 2020-21 deer seasons,” said David Stainbrook, the game commission’s deer and elk section supervisor.
“It’s a trend that hunters have maintained over the past three license years. The fact that we can maintain such high success rates on bucks year after year demonstrates the sustainability of the deer population in Pennsylvania,” he said. In 2018-2019, 147,750 bucks were harvested. The antlerless deer harvest for the 2020-21 seasons was 260,400. It exceeded the 2019-20 antlerless deer harvest of 226,191 by 15%. The 2018-19 harvest was 226,940.
