Hunters will find out in April if they must cross does off their list of prey in the first week of December after the state Board of Game Commissioners granted conditional approval to a plan to make Dec. 1 to 5 buck hunting only.

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Hunters in four mountainous areas of Pennsylvania are one step closer to having five days of firearms doe hunting eliminated from the calendar beginning in the fall.

Presently, hunters in the state's 22 wildlife management units can hunt bucks and does concurrently from Dec. 1 to Dec. 13. That could change for hunters in units 2D, 2G, 3C and 4B if the Pennsylvania Board of Game Commissioners upholds its decision to change the first five days to bucks only.

The board granted preliminary approval to the proposal Tuesday in a 4-3 vote. If the board grants final approval in April, it would take effect in the fall.

"I think this is a step in the right direction," Commissioner Thomas Boop said.

The targeted units are in the western, northcentral and northeastern sections of the state.

Game Commission executive director Carl Roe said the proposal came from his office, not the Game Commission's deer-management team.

Roe said he would like the agency to study the effect of the reduced season over the next three or four years to determine its impact on deer populations, on hunting success rates and on hunting interest in those four zones.

"This is a study," he said. "We'll take a look at how it goes, and we can make adjustments if we have to."

Several forest managers, including Dan Devlin, director of the state Department of Conservation and Natural Resources Bureau of Forestry, told the commissioners Sunday they oppose the reduction in doe hunting.

According to those managers, the forest in the targeted units is just beginning to show signs of recovery after decades of overbrowsing by deer.

Cutting back on doe hunting, they said, could allow the deer herd in those units to grow, leading to further degradation of the forest.

Game Commission deer biologist Bret Wallingford on Monday told the commissioners his team would rather see the concurrent buck/doe seasons run uniformly in all the state's units.

Citing a desire to cater to the deer management team's wishes, commissioners Daniel Hill, Roxane Palone and Gregory Isabella voted against the proposal.

"I think there are many options to work a study around concurrent seasons," Hill said.

Voting in favor of the proposal besides Boop were commissioners David Schreffler, Jay Delaney and Russell Schleiden.

"I don't want to tie the agency's hands if they want another tool to manage our deer in Pennsylvania," Delaney said.

Many hunters in Pennsylvania's mountainous areas have been calling for a reduction in doe hunting the past several years, citing concerns about a lack of deer sightings.

Boop said he sees the Game Commission managing species other than deer, such as bears and turkeys, differently from unit to unit by offering varying hunting season lengths.

"For some reason, we have been reluctant to do that with deer," he said.

"I do see us down the road in five, 10 or 15 years, truly managing deer based on wildlife management units."

In other business, the commissioners rejected a proposal to ban pet ownership of nanday conures — a green South American parrot.

The ban was proposed to prevent escaped or released nandays from establishing populations in the wild.

Throngs of nanday owners and other bird enthusiasts showered the board of commissioners in recent days with pleas not to move forward with the ban, claiming the tropical nandays could never survive a Pennsylvania winter.

Also, the board tabled a proposal to expand the areas around Pittsburgh and Philadelphia where high-powered rifles may not be used for hunting.

Currently, only shotguns and muzzleloaders can be used to hunt in Allegheny, Bucks, Chester, Delaware and Montgomery counties.

A proposal was made to widen those zones to include parts of counties surrounding Allegheny County and areas around and between Reading and Allentown.

Isabella said that he has been inundated in recent weeks by hunters opposed to the proposal.

"We need to do a little more thought and make sure the proposal that's out there is correct," he said.

The earliest Isabella expects the issue to be brought back to the board would be in 2009.

E-mail: preilly@lnpnews.com