The buck harvest increased 5 percent to 113,860 deer in 2012-13, the Pennsylvania Game Commission said in its annual report to the Legislature on Tuesday.

Matthew Hough, the commission’s new acting director, presented the report to the House Game and Fisheries Committee in Harrisburg.

Archers took about one-third of the bucks, and nearly half of the archers used crossbows.

While the buck harvest rose, the doe harvest of 209,250 remained about the same from the year before.

Of the 25 wildlife management units into which the commission divides the state, the deer population decreased in one while the numbers stayed about the same in 18 and increased in four.

Through the Deer Management Assistance Program, hunters were allowed to take extra deer on 1.49 million acres. Hough said only 47 percent of those deer hunters filed report cards, which they are required to file even if they don’t get a deer with their permits.

The report outlined efforts that the commission made to introduce people to hunting.

About 41,000 people took hunter-trapper education courses required of new license holders. That’s the most since 1992 and more students than in any state but Texas.

Another 32,000 students participated in archery programs in their schools, and 34,000 students younger than 12 hunted with an adult mentor.

The commission raised $17,833 by selling apps of state game lands for cell phones and tablets.

In longer term trends, however, the number of hunters and harvests are down for species such as rabbits, squirrel, crows, snowshoe hare and woodchucks, as is participation in the fall turkey season when hunters took 14,074 birds. Participation in spring turkey hunting dipped 7 percent in 2012 compared with 2011. The 35,400 gobblers taken last spring was 11 percent below the average for the past decade.

With 21,300 duck hunters, Pennsylvania ranks first and the 26,300 goose hunters put Pennsylvania second among states in the Atlantic Flyway.

A consultant trapping live animals in Fayette County found the first eastern spotted skunk seen in Pennsylvania since the early 1950s.

Peregrine falcons, meanwhile, nested in 28 man-made sites and four cliffs in 2012.

Ospreys, which once were rare as eagles, made 65 nests in 17 counties.

Eagle and osprey rebounded, however, bats are facing near-extinction.