The Pennsylvania Game Commission will host eight free fall driving tours across state game lands from Sept. 20 through Oct. 26, 2026, opening a wide-angle look at the habitat work that shapes small-game and big-game hunting on public land in Pennsylvania.
The 2026 slate runs the length of the Commonwealth. Cambria County’s State Game Lands 108, a 23,086-acre tract on the Allegheny Front, opens the season on Sunday, Sept. 20 with a self-guided 7.5-mile one-way tour beginning at the game-lands access road three-tenths of a mile north of Frugality along State Route 53. Highlights include a rehabilitated strip mine that has been converted into pheasant-release small-game habitat, a study area for grassland-nesting birds and black bear, endangered northern harrier hawk and short-eared owl habitat, and herbaceous openings planted to feed wildlife.
State Game Lands 57 in Luzerne and Wyoming counties follows on Sept. 26 with a 30-mile route requiring high-clearance four-wheel drive; conservation-partner crews from the National Wild Turkey Federation and Ducks Unlimited helped complete the habitat projects along the loop. Somerset County’s State Game Lands 111 hosts a 7-mile one-way tour across 10,286 acres on Laurel Ridge on Oct. 4, and Bedford County’s 12,000-acre State Game Lands 26 runs a 7-mile route on Oct. 11 with a narrated STQRY Guide app tour visitors are asked to download in advance because cellular service on the tract is limited.
Berks County’s State Game Lands 110 — a tract of more than 10,000 acres that extends into Schuylkill County — also runs on Oct. 11, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., beginning at the Mountain Road gate about 5 miles west of Hamburg Borough. Elk County’s State Game Lands 311, the flagship for the state’s elk range, closes the calendar with a tour that pairs habitat work with the fall bugle season.
Every tour is free, held rain or shine, and open only to street-legal vehicles. The Game Commission has been running the fall driving-tour program at roughly this scale for several years; the agency’s 2024 annual legislative report noted an eight-tour slate for 2023 as well, framing the tours as a way to walk the public through the wildlife-habitat management that underpins the state’s public hunting acreage.
For hunters, the tours are also a scouting tool. Habitat crews, biologists, foresters, and game wardens ride the routes to answer questions and explain what species the openings, cuts, and food plots are built for — information that translates directly into where to set up on opening day of grouse, pheasant, deer, or bear season on the same tracts.
