Penn’s Outdoors

Here’s shocking news for you [Insert Sarcasm Here].  The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review is reporting that some changes to deer hunting regulations may be motivated by a desire to increase license fees for more revenue.

Ok, let me back up and provide some context to this story.  Next week, the Commissioners will meet.  On their agenda is the proposal to make the first 5 days of the firearms deer season just for buck in specific WMUs.  The WMUs affected would be 2D, 2G, 3C and 4B.  The rest of the firearms season would be buck and doe hunting.

This has been a proposal pushed for by a number of hunter advocacy groups throughout PA.  So, what’s the problem? The opening line of an article in Sunday’s Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reads…

Some within the Pennsylvania Game Commission are apparently trying to trade deer for dollars.

See, the Game Commission wants (perhaps needs) to raise license fees. 

According to one agency source, the proposed changes are meant to “evaluate the impact of changed season length on hunter success rates for future use as a new management tool.”

The reality is apparently something different, however. According to multiple agency sources, all speaking on condition of anonymity, commission executive director Carl Roe proposed the changes — against the wishes of his team of deer biologists — in an attempt to convince state lawmakers to give the agency its long-sought license fee increase.

The Commission knows that they can’t ask state lawmakers to hike up license fees at a time when hunters are already voicing such a high level of frustration.  But what if they give us just a little?  Make it look like we’re getting something for having to pay more to see less deer in the woods. That will work. Right?

Just in case it doesn’t, we’ll do what all government does when we can’t get taxpayers to give up more money.  We’ll threaten the loss of jobs and thus the loss of resources to the public, in this case to us hunters.

Roe, the sources said, further said that if the agency doesn’t get its license increase, he will have to make cuts in programs, perhaps eliminating deer research and even the jobs of some of his three deer biologists.

I don’t know if this is true or not.  I am sure that the dramatic reduction in the sale of hunting licenses has proved an issue for the funding of the Commission.  But the Commission will make a huge mistake by trying to increase license fees.  People are leaving Penn’s Woods by the droves and asking the rest of us to pay more will not help. 

I know these decisions are not easy but the future of hunting in PA is being shaped by the decisions made now!  We need everything out on the table and hidden agendas can’t be part of this.  Unfortunately, it appears that those with the most power to affect our hunting are playing politics with deer management.  No surprise, but still very sad.