Penn’s Outdoors

Jim Collins has been running an interesting series of articles on hunting license sales in Pennsylvania in The Sunday Review.  In yesterday’s article, he shares something from a fellow outdoor writer that I didn’t realize. 

First of all, everyone knows about the drastic reduction of hunting license sales in PA as well as elsewhere in the US. 

• 1970 - 1,182,860 PA hunting licenses sold
• 1980 - 1,299,919 PA hunting licesnes sold
• 1990 - 1,156,895 PA hunting licenses sold
• 2000 - 991,560 PA hunting licenses sold
• 2006 - 879,792 PA hunting licenses sold

These figures include all basic licenses including resident and non-resident, and all age group license categories.  The trend is obvious.

What I didn’t realize is that these numbers have been bolstered by women hunters.  According to Dale Miller, who is cited in the article…

In some ways the numbers are even worse than what they appear! The loss of male hunters is even worse than the overall loss of hunters because significant numbers of women have joined the ranks, and those numbers now ‘hide’ some of the overall loss.

If it weren’t for the women joining the numbers of hunters at such a rapid pace, the losses would look even worse.

With more freedoms and opportunities for women, they are likely to ‘stay’ in hunting, so once their natural percentage is achieved, it may remain a stable factor in our hunter numbers.

A Google search did not reveal the exact number of women hunters.  I already have written why people like Tiffany Lakosky from Gettin’ Close are vital to our sport.  The problem is that I don’t think that women hunting numbers are enough to prevent an continued decline. 

My guess is that PA hunting license sales will bottom out in the high 700,000 range.  I don’t think they will go lower than that as there is a base that will always hunt regardless of the conditions.  I welcome the greater involvement of women in hunting and hope that they can help the numbers rebound but I am skeptical that it will be enough.