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duncsdad -> RE: 2007/2008 deer harvest (4/6/2008 11:27:09 AM)
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dpms wrote:
Blame the demise of the farm for the lack of pheasants. Grouse numbers are cyclical and they are down for sure. Kids will hunt if mom or dad has passion for the sport and doesn't whine about years past.
I have to disagree with 2 of these 3 statements.
"Blame the demise of the farm for the lack of pheasants" and "Kids will hunt if mom or dad has a passion for the sport and doesn't whine about years past."
The farm has nothing to do with the vast majority of pheasants in PA. Pheasant hunting in PA is much like trout fishing in PA, with rare exception, it is a put-and-take affair. Pheasant hunting declined because in the late 70's/early 80;s PA stocked 1 million pheasants and in 2007 PA stocked 100,000 pheasants -- a 90% decline. The underlying reason behind the decline is money, of course. With out a license increase for years, something had to be cut. The only thing that PA stocks en mass is pheasants, so that is where the cuts came.
And with the upsurge of preserves and clubs, the PGC doesn't care -- most hunters buy a license for deer and as long as that continues, they have a job.
As for the kids issue, I must again disagree. The youth hunts, especially for pheasants, were designed to give young hunters a opportunity. It has, in at least my experience, been an utter failure. Don't get me wrong, I like the program, but it hasn't worked.
The plant I work in has about 500 employees. I have offered every year to volunteer to take anyone's kids pheasant hunting with me for the youth hunt. The first year I got 4 kids. The next year 2. And so on until this year I got a brother and sister and if it weren't for their father basically begging them to go, they wouldn't have gone.
Now we live in rural area. Hunting and fishing are the passion of these parents, yet their kids have no interest in going pheasant hunting in easy terrain, over champion birddogs, with birds stocked just for them, for half a day.
Of course, the PGC has stocked few birds for the youth hunt as well and most articles that are in the newspapers are about hunts that took place on private club or preserve grounds -- no over PGC birds.
If these kids don't want to hunt under those circumstance with the parents that they have, it becomes a long row to hoe to get other kids interested and keep them interested -- especially if the only hunting they get to do is deer hunting and they not only aren't successful with respect to harvest, but don't see very many deer to at least keep their interest.
And forget getting any number of kids that don't have a hunting heritage to go. My nephew (18) and his buddy (16) were visiting this week from Kentucky. They had been to the mall, movies, Hooters, golfing, etc. and were bored to tears. I asked if they wanted to go to the shooting range and they were all enthused. They wanted to know if I had anything fully automatic. I said, no. They asked if I had something semi-auto with a big clip like an AR. I said, no. They asked if I had any high capacity pistols. I said, no. I told them I had some custom rifles, some fine over/under shotguns, some revolvers, etc. They said, no. And went back to playing video games on their cell phones.
As for the whining part, hunters have the same right to whine about what most view as the decline in deer hunting as you do about the price of gas going up. You had something, whether that was a lot of deer or $1.50 gas, and now you don't, through no action of your own. That promotes whining.
The grouse population is very cyclical and is in a down turn, but that will rebound with no effort from the PGC.
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