ORIGINAL: Dr. Trout

well I had to jump back in to clear up something..

As I sometimes do I wrote asking for info and received an answer but was not exactly what I wanted....

my figures were not 100% correct.. I ask for junior resident licenses sales and that's what I got.. I was not aware they added a combination license and the 36,000 went from just a junior license to a combo.. so deerfly is correct we have not lost that many as a whole...  SORRY !!!!

now == I am enjoying the input on this topic... and have a question...

one thing I think helped my interest in animals , hunting, and the outdoors in general was cub scouts and boy scouts... is that something that has also become a thing of the past ?????

another was when I was in high school everyone had to take Biology.... is that another thing gone because of being politically correct ????

 
 
 
I think fewer and fewer are making it to Eagle Scouts. I did scouts up till 7th grade then quit because of sports. Plus with more broken homes, less and less are getting into scouting
 
Every highschooler is required to take Biology...most schools its 10th grade

"#2.. after reaching the age that an adult license is required there is a sizable price increase to whom ever is paying the bills too .. maybe they feel it is no longer a value.. less opportunities etc..."

doc, no disrespect meant, at all, but i never factored in the "value" aspect when it came to any type of hunting or fishing. to me, it was an escape from a rough world to a special place or time. though i only turkey hunt now, i would pay 4X the cost of the license to continue. as eyes says, we need to create that adventure and feeling that the outdoors is a very special place in the minds of the youth. i swear that i have had as many spiritual moments when in the boonies as i have had in church. no value, just memories.

"#2.. after reaching the age that an adult license is required  there is a sizable price increase to whom ever is paying the bills too .. maybe they feel it is no longer a value.. less opportunities etc..."

I would agree that ther are less opportunities -- no more youth hunts, and no more not adhering to the AR rules, so the value, if measured in game brought home against the return on investment of the cost of a license would go down because they are not going to be as successful.  However, I don't think value ever comes into the picture, nor does opportunity.  Read my post about how many youth hunt opportunities I was involved with and how few took advantage of them.
 
As for an increase of $14 in license cost, less than the price of a CD, a night at the movies, or 15 music downloads, driving youth from hunting more than not seeing any deer, if you beleive that, I have some beach front property in Kansas I think you might be interested in and I will even cut you a deal where I throw in the county bridge for free.

I don't think we should discount the impact that youth sports play in declining hunter numbers either. When we were kids (I'm 36 now) sports were fun. Maybe one practice a week, and one game a week before you got to high school, for most sports except youth football.

Now, kids as young as 7 or 8 are involved in ONE sport, year round, that requires an insane amount of time and financial investment. My kids have friends & classmates who practice 2-4 times a week and have games or tournaments all throughout the weekend, for 6-9 months a year. It's not necessarily that the kids are lazy or don't enjoy some physical activity, but their parents would have absolutely no time to get them into the outdoors with their hectic schedules.

Don't forget too that many of our dads back in the day worked 8 hour days with weekends off. Or if they worked in the mill like a lot of my friends' dads did, they at least had 8 hour shifts with a couple of days off in between shifts. I know very few people who don't work 10 hour days, plus at least a half day on Saturday.

If we, as sportsmen, are seriously concerned about getting kids involved in hunting, we've got to take the initiative. Invite a friend and his kid to join you on a low pressure, quick hunt that can last a half-hour if it's slow or a couple hours if it's good. If your kids have friends who don't get a lot of parental involvement at home, see if you can take them along with you for a few hours of fishing or even just to go plink some targets with a BB gun or .22 I got involved in hunting because a friend's dad took us to shoot clay pigeons one day when I was 11. That's all it took to give me the bug.

My experiences are that kids love to be outdoors. Sure they may like their hi-tech toys, but don't use them as an excuse to not even extend an invitation. Heck, let them bring their Nintendo DS or an iPod if you think they'll get bored. If there aren't any deer left where you hunt, learn to hunt for something new.

6 years ago I started waterfowl hunting. There was a pond where I bow hunted that always had some mallards on it, and there was an old canoe there. I had no experience duck hunting, and nobody that introduced me to it. I just decided to try it. My first hunt, I went through a box of shells with no calls and no decoys. I got a dozen mallard decoys and a call for a total investment of $45. A few years later I got a free lab puppy that I trained on my own. In Western PA at least, you won't have to worry about other hunters shooting all the ducks and geese. Those are around in abundance every year.

Find a farm or a Game Lands where the PGC stocks pheasants. Sit in a woodlot with plenty of squirrels. Find a corn field that holds doves. If you want action, you can find it without looking too hard.

Simply put, there are plenty of hunting opportunities out there other than deer that don't require much time or financial investment. If you want to see youngsters get involved in the outdoors, take the initiative to learn a new hunting skill and share the experience.

I hate the current deer mis-management plan. But it hasn't dampened my love for the outdoors. Using a lack of deer to quit hunting is a cop out, plain and simple.

we need to create that adventure and feeling that the outdoors is a very special place in the minds of the youth. i swear that i have had as many spiritual moments when in the boonies as i have had in church. no value, just memories.

now that's what separates the men from the boys....

too many of today's hunters are about the harvest and not the experience ... and that may be impossible to pass on to today's youth...

as for my remarks about value.. I guess I based that on the people I know and talk too....

many do not think the price of a license today is worth the money.. hunting or fishing

I remember when I brought up the subject of the $5 youth fishing license idea from a few years ago at our club... you can not image the complaints about spending $5 for a kid to be able to fish... and just look at the comments when the subject of a price increase appears for hunting licenses...

maybe it's the economy in different areas or the wages of the family....

I still hear guys complaining about the price a trout stamp or the lake Erie stamp...

sports and the working adult do play a LARGE part in youth involvement too.. I'm sure of that...

ORIGINAL: tippecanoe

ORIGINAL: psu_fish


really? deny kids cause they dont want hunt, eat or skin squirrels

Would you take a kid hunting if he didn't what it took to hunt?

 
 
do you mean
 
"Would you take a kid hunting if he didnt know what it took to hunt?"

"many do not think the price of a license today is worth the money.. hunting or fishing"

And just why do you think that is Doc?
 
Could it be that the PFBC said that their new trout program would have fewer trout, but they would be bigger?  Then when the program went into effect, the license buyer said, hey wait a minute, I didn't know that fewer meant 20 to 30 percent fewer, that's a lot fewer, and that bigger meant less than 2 inches longer and less than 2 oz. heavier, that's not much, I feel ripped off.
 
OR
 
Could it be that the PGC said that in order to meet their budget they were going to need stock fewer pheasants (no word on if they would be bigger)?  Then when the program went into effect, the license buyer said, hey wait a minute, I didn't know that fewer meant cutting the stocking from 1 million birds to 200,000 (that's 80% for the math challenged Doc) and then further to less than 100,000, I feel ripped off.
 
OR
 
Could it be that the PGC said in order to get the herd/forrests in the right balance there is going to be an AR/HR program that will result in fewer deer, but bigger bucks and that after a maximum of one to two seasons the harvest numbers on bucks would return to normal?  Then when the program went into effect, the license buyer said, hey wait a minute, I didn't know that fewer meant 40 to 50 percent less deer and that fewer meant 40 to 50 percent less harvested bucks and bigger meant about a 2 to 3 percent increase in antler size for the very biggest bucks harvested in the state that made the record book and no discernable difference to the other 99.9% of the bucks harvested, plus the buck harvest numbers did not return to what I had come to know as normal, but where basically cut in half and have been on a decline ever since the program started, I feel ripped off.
 
OR
 
Could it be that those buying hunting licenses want to experience something other than going for a walk in nature, perhaps even seeing legal game to shoot at, and maybe, just maybe harvesting something worthwhile, like a deer?
 
OR
 
Could it be that they are just so strapped for cash that they complain about the value and price of a hunting license while plunking down a bag of chips, a beef stick, a large coffee, and a pack of smokes on a daily basis that equals more than half the cost of an annual hunting or fishing license?  If you pick this one, I have a great program for you -- it guarrantees to double your IQ or no money back.

Hunting is some of the best times me and my son have together, when we are chillaxing at home we tend to get on each others nerves  [ nothing like a know it all 18 yo trying to tell things to a 50 yo know it all  ], when we are in the woods this all disappears for the most part, he tagged along with me from the time he could walk, I know if the time comes that we dont hunt together anymore ill have lost a big part of my life in the outdoors, hopefully that day comes when they bury me and not before

bluntman , i agree with you post , me and my father spend maybe a full 25 days a year together since i turned 18 , not cause i dont like him lol but we have jobs and his involves him going out of town all the time , well my point is this , those 25 days are 95% of the time in the woods or on the river , i wouldnt personally know what i would be doing in life if my father hadnt gotten me interested in hunting when i was young , i have been fishing with him since i could walk or swim(in the river hed tie a rope on me and let me go , well in the shallows at least , the deep he usually would carry me along, and hunting with him since i was around 5 ... i can honestly say there has only been a total of 3 animals (2 deer,1 turkey) that he has taken where i wasn present ... to him it isn the same without me , and most of the time i feel the same way , i have my hunting friends but #1 will always be my father

If you could find a way for the deer to shoot back, or at least make it appear they can. Today's kids would wait in line for hours to buy a license.

This is one of the better discussions on this board.
Here are my thoughts on it as I am a lifelong hunter who at 45 is either an old timer or a youngster depending on one's perspective. LOL
I have 3 boys/young men who now range in age from 20-26
They have had all the opportunity in the world to be hunters, just ask their mother.
The 2 youngest did the youth hunts, They all small game hunted with dogs(birds and beagles),Waterfowl,Deer in all 3 seasons and went fishing.
Today none of them go hunting and only 1 fishes occasionally. The oldest works 50 hrs a week at his job plus has his own cleaning company that he spends another 20-30 hrs at. the middle one is a nurse and spends his spare time partying with his Friends chasing the opposite sex. and the youngest is in collage.
They mostly quit hunting by the time they were seniors in high school for a lot of the reasons already stated here. Sure they all 3 talk about how they want hunt this or that but when it comes down to it they don't.
 
I would give my left nut for them to have the same passion as I do but that didn't happen. Maybe someday they will take it back up but if not so be it.
 My  advice to all you parents with young children is to expose them to the outdoors at every chance  but don't force it on them.
The world has changed and we have to accept that and hope that they(kids) at least remember what was taught to them as youngsters because unfortunately they may need to fall back on them memories if the world continues on the path it is going.
Mike

And......equally disturbing, here is an article that apparently ran in Clarion paper today, probably others as well:
 
Fall off in hunting is good news
2010-12-30 / Opinion
By Amy Skylark Elizabeth Research specialist PETA Foundation Norfolk, Va.

There’s good news from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Within the last few days, newspapers across the country have reported 33 states have seen a decline in hunting license sales over the last decade.

Hunting is a dying sport in the U.S., with Pennsylvania leading the way.

According to the USFWS, license sales in Pennsylvania have dropped 20 percent over the last two decades.

If this trend continues, say analysts, we will see an end to sport hunting within 20 years.

Certainly, most nonviolent Americans today prefer their wildlife alive.

The USFWS has also determined that less than 5 percent of us hunt, while 66 million of us are “Wildlife Watchers.”

We predict that the tiny bunch of hunter holdouts will soon stumble out of the woods to join the mainstream Americans who have turned in droves to hiking, biking, rock-climbing, diving, and other bloodless sports.
 
 
Tells me that we hunters have more important battles and IMHO makes the deer one seem rather insignificant on a grand scale.

Actually, reducing the deer to the point that hunters in Pennsylvania are quiting in droves is accomplishing what the anti hunters have been trying to do for decades. They must be laughing their azzes off at us. Little fact from the QDMA 2009 report = from 1985 to 2006 overall hunter numbers fell 10% but big game hunters only fell 5%. From 2001-2006 big game hunters only fell 2% nationwide. EXCEPT IN PENNSYLVANIA WHERE THEY FELL 22% FROM 2000 TO 2008. Can anyone think of anything that has happened since 2000 in Pennsylvania that could have caused this tremendous deviation from the national trend.

"Actually, reducing the deer to the point that hunters in Pennsylvania are quiting in droves is accomplishing what the anti hunters have been trying to do for decades. They must be laughing their azzes off at us."

No doubt the anti's a pleased to see a decline in license sales. But to suggest they embrace the bizzare logic of increasing the killing, in hopes of ending it. Is a bit of a stretch.

Hawaii, really?  that is a JOKE


Rhode Island is smallest state in the Union at 1,214 sq miles. RI in 1995 had 301,026 acres of forest..so 15 years later I would bet more of that forest has been changed into residential and other land uses

http://www.planning.ri.gov/landuse/pdf/TP%20149.PDF



Lycoming County, PA is 1,244 sq miles


Connecticut, Delaware and Massachusetts = Liberal states so of course hunting wont be popular