Not wanting to burn a great thread, moved my thoughts on this subject from another board.
 
 

dpms
....... it is hard to believe that we have hunters in this state that oppose youth hunting seasons and opportunities.

 
 


Opposition is why you have the opportunity's you have today. There would be no hunting if it weren't for hunters questioning the intentions and/or abuse of programs.


Many of the older hunters still heading to the fields and forest never had "youth hunting programs" and they hunted many a day without bagging game,  yet are back at it every year.  So what motivated the youth of yesteryear?

Lastly, just who does benefit from "youth hunting seasons" and/or other special programs like a $25.00 pheasant stamp? 
 
Could these same great stories have been possible during regular season?

I think so.

The issue I see with that train of thought is that when we were youths hunting and fishing was what we did. We did it because 1) some older person did it; 2) there wasn’t a whole lot else to do; and 3) there was plenty of game to be seen and shot (at, at least). Unfortunately, those three things are no longer a given.

Fewer and fewer adults are fishing and even fewer are hunting. So no longer does everyone’s Dad or Uncle or neighbor or any other adult (still required for hunters younger than 16) automatically take a kid hunting when they reach that magical age of 12.

Let me relay two examples.

First one occurred during the very first youth pheasant season. I worked for a semi rural company that employed 1,200 people, almost all of the country folk. I put up a sign in the cafeteria that I would offer the services of my two champion English Pointers and myself to the first five youth hunters that signed up for a morning hunt and five more for the afternoon. I got a whopping 4 sign ups.

We hunted the AM and put up nearly 40 birds. All hunters got shooting, but all were clear misses(this showed how little practice they had at shooting anything, especially those that approached 16).

The next year, I put up the sign up sheet and I got exactly ZERO participation. I went to the parents of those that hunted the previous year and asked why they weren’t going this year. The answers ranged from they have a soccer game to they didn’t see the point since they didn’t kill any last year to they are going to a birthday party that evening and they didn’t want to get tired out to after not seoany deer, they no longer wish to hunt.

The second story is about the knife I took to Africa. I asked the father of the boy whom I wanted to give the knife to if his other, older son would be offended that his brother got it and his response was “Unless it is a video game or has to do with baseball, he could not care less.” Keep in mind this is a hunting, fishing, shooting, camping, Boy Scout father and family and only one kid cared about hunting and fishing at all.

With regard to other things to do, when you were in that 12 years range, was there soccer, laser tag, smart phones, endless TV and internet content, traveling sports leagues, video games that made hunting a warm, no rain or snow, no blood and guts, indoor sport that didn’t require getting up before the butt crack of dawn and they always see animals to shoot.

As for seeing game, when I was in that 12 year old range, we had beagles. I cannot recall a day that we didn’t have rabbits running. In fact, we had competitions to see who shot the most. You better have an average of 3 per day against a limit of 4 or there was no hope of winning. In addition, with 1 million (vs. less than 200,000) pheasants stocked, we often killed a limit of bunnies and birds before lunch.

I shot my first buck with a rifle at age 14 (missed my share for the 2 years before) and had a run of 32 consecutive successful buck years until the effects of AR/HR brought that to a halt. Now, if I see 10 deer in rifle season, let alone at one time, it’s a good season.

So it just isn’t the same opportunity we had.

I had no soccer and no internet games just baseball, basketball, football, golf, tennis, swimming, and many also had some sort of part time work. As for electronic games, plenty of arcade games, if they might count.
You say the wild game we had in the day, no longer exist and that's reason for special youth hunts? So what happens when the youth become adult hunters, and there's no longer, specially stocked hunts?



Thus far this year, I have spent a whopping $15.00 for hunting season and the two major purchases made, remain in the pink envelope they came in.

As for ARs, time and time again, I've had to pass on a "sub-legal" buck only to see it hanging on a barn up the road, from my happy hunting grounds.

So who does benefit and how.

FYI, I've offered my land as well as contact info to a local instructor for the purpose of youth hunts. Also, offered my shooting range for sighting in, practice, and/or patterning for turkey hunting etc.

I understand only two youth, took advantage of the early turkey hunt.

Seems like an awful lot of effort to benefit who?

There were no games in my family when we were kids. Dad always said "you never get hurt workin', you get hurt playin!" Dad didn't fish, but he'd take us and made sure we had some type of equipment that would work. But we did hunt. My older brother wasn't much for rabbit hunting, and he bein' 2 years older than me, I used his license and Model 12 Winchester and went small game huntin' with Dad when I was only 10 years old. There were hundreds of places to hunt back then, and game was plentiful. No problem to get a limit of rabbits and a few birds too. There were lots of wild ring neck pheasants that would explode up out of a field, cackling as they flew. (Not like the pen raised Chinese chickens they stock today). Dad always had a beagle, so when I came of age, so did I, and as my oldest boy turned 12, I went to the Sportsman Club with him for his training course to get his license. When my second oldest turned 12, same deal, and I went to the course again. But #2 son never really cared for hunting. Number 3 son has never had a hunting license, but is an avid fisherman. And now, none of my grand kids are interested in hunting. If they can't do it with their thumbs, then it don't matter. I can't see needing any special youth hunting seasons since the world has speeded up; even the adults barely have time to hunt. If they want to do something, they should at least allow Sunday hunting. The average working man today is lucky to get a couple of Saturdays in small game, and maybe take a vacation day for the first day of Buck season, and maybe 1st and 2nd Saturdays. I gave up hunting in 1995 when the last beagle died. There's no place to hunt anymore anyway. All my good bunny patches have 10 new homes sittin' on them, and even if they're still surrounded by small game cover, you're in the Safety Zone, and that's a no-no. Hunting just ain't the same now days. All the new rules; ie semi-automatics, cap lock black powder, silencers, cross-bows, etc. The insurance industries have some powerful lobbyists, and the auto insurers want every deer in PA killed. Last year that I hunted, I only saw 6 deer, a far cry from 40 or 50 I'd see and that was in Northern McKean county. And today, you have a lot of hunters out there that live by the motto: If it's brown, it's goin' down!
Aw, now I've talked myself right into depression.

Yeah Mitch sometimes the truth do hurt.

I remember the days of the rabbit. Every morning before school and every afternoon after school during trapping season with burlap sack, I was checking my box traps in hopes of turning in a few bunnies for spending money.

Always wondered if the game warden (as they were known back them days) did transport all those rabbits and stock other areas or if he enjoyed hasenpfeffer.

Can't say as I ever shot at anything other than stocked ditch chickens but I do remember when Mercer county was mostly off limits, for many years, to hunting the ringless bird from China. Man those birds where everywhere, till they opened season and quit stocking.

Some may remember a mass stocking of birds from the mid Atlantic states? These birds were stocked in the North West corner of Venango County around 1995 in an area practically, on my front door step. Geez, I got so excited I ran out and purchased my first German Shorthaired Pointer. The following winter we got powdered with snow and cold temps.... so much for the hearty birds from the midwest.

All that money spent trying to fix something that wasn't broke ... so who benefited?

I’m 67 and I remember hunting with my dad and grandfather starting at 12 yrs old. We lived next to my grandparents farm , always was hunting rabbits & squirrels and yes always had beagles dogs we treated them good and they always treated us good in return for small game. My grandmother always had excellent rabbit and squirrel meals ( yummy ) 👍...couldn’t Wait for deer season ... loved it and had a ball , took me a few years also before I got one tagged . I remember by time I was 15 or 16 i couldn’t Wait to get home from school and hit my favorite little spot about 100 yds up in the woods near my grandparents Spring were it was always a good place to sit near dark ..my dad worked afternoons so if I got lucky enough to tag one and if my grandfather heard me shot he would jump on the tractor and come up to were I was and we would load it on the tractor to get it to the barn ... man I miss those days... now son still hunts but sometimes with his work doesn’t get out as much as he would like . Last year we did manage to get him a doe, 3 grandsons ... 2 in their 20’s love hunting 1 (13) not so much but also likes to fish so at least I get to enjoy fishing time with him..

I'm 38.  I grew up with endless video games and TV....AND 2-stroke dirtbikes.   I grew up with parents who not only did not hunt and fish, but they did not support the killing of wild animals.  They did however, enjoy hikes in the woods and taught me a great deal about the names, species, etc of flora and fauna.  
 
At some point in my life, I took interest in not only the outdoors as a place to go for a walk or learn about trees, but also a place to recreate in the form of hunting and fishing.  I had no teachers, save for the internet and good old fashioned trial and error.  I am now commonly referred to as "obsessed".  All of my vacation days are not spent on the beach like the rest of my family, but spend afield.  I've earned and experienced my fair share of hunting/fishing successes and victories, which I felt at one time were unobtainable.  
 
My point is, there will always be people who are drawn to this life of woods and stream; of rifles and rods.  It's the call of the wild; a draw to something primordial, which there is no substitute for.  Granted in this age, we have modern weapons, modern materials, carbon fiber, braided lines, high velocity powders, crystal clear scopes, etc, but the chase is, has been, and always will be the same.  It's a passion.  Nothing gets my blood pumping, heart beating out of my chest or body shaking quite like when the sky just starts to get light over a duck swamp.  Anticipation, anxiety, fear, excitement, silence and then from no where...the whistling of wings.  Who needs drugs?  It makes me tingle just thinking about it.  
 
I never experienced any youth hunting as a kid.  I bought my first hunting license when I was 20 years old.  

IMHO, hunting and fishing participation is declining not so much because of lazy or disinterested kids, as it is because of delusional, obsessive parents.  And really, the design and intention behind many of these youth programs is to recruit new hunters and fishers to our ranks.  
 
I've got a 17 year old daughter (she like fishing once in awhile until she was about 10 but otherwise has zero interest in hunting and fishing), and my boys are 14 and 8.  I'm telling yinz, there are so many parents today that are absolutely convinced that their kid is a D1 athlete, or will be the next great dancer, musician or artist.  I stopped drinking that Kool Aid about 5 years ago, and as a result, my boys would rather fish and hunt (the 14 year old) than do anything else.  They like their video games and Netflix, but neither one of them has EVER refused an opportunity to go fishing and the oldest has never refused an opportunity to hunt.  
 
I could tell yinz story after story of their friends that have parents that grew up with the outdoors as part of the fabric of their lives - much like the stories being told here - but they've made little to no effort to get their kids in the woods or on the water because at 8 or 9 years old, every kid has to specialize in one sport year round.  
 
For those of you who don't have kids in youth sports, all the rage now is to get your kid in an AAU program in soccer, basketball or baseball and pay an "expert" or team of "experts" $thousand$ a year to make your kid a great athlete so he or she can get one of those coveted athletic scholarships and so that parents can relive their glory days through their kids.  
 
It's sad.  It's delusional thinking.  It's insanity.  Often it borders on emotional and psychological abuse.  
 
I love, love, love, love the youth hunting and fishing programs for a couple reasons.  Primary among them is that I get to get my boys in situations where the riff rafff and bad sportsmen are largely absent.  Call me a prude, or call me old fashioned, but I think it's pretty pathetic to have my boys on the water somewhere around grown men who have to throw in an F bomb every other word and just act like morons in general.  
 
On the mentored youth trout days, we don't have to share the stream with low lifes that feel the need to low hole a kid, or cast across the stream and tangle a kid's line, so that they can fill a stringer with trout.  It's a time when parents, grandparents and other family members can take their kids out to enjoy a low pressure day without having to worry about obnoxious behavior from other adults.  We've done the mentored youth trout thing for the last 3 years, and I've not seen a single adult abusing the opportunity for their own benefit.  
 
I've done pheasant openers and duck openers on state game lands before, and I'd think twice or thrice before I took my kid into that situation.   
 
Here's where I'll be real honest and say that I don't think that these special youth programs and opportunities are really doing much to recruit new hunters and fishermen though.  
 
For people like me who are already committed to raising their kids in the woods and on the water, it creates bonus opportunities.  And some pretty great ones at that.  It's awesome to take my boys and their friends to fully stocked trout streams and get the first crack at them before they're roped up and stored in a freezer for a year before they're thrown away.  It was awesome to take my son to a game lands last Saturday and hunt pheasants that - judging by their behavior - hadn't been hunted that morning before we got there at 11:15.  
 
The very small handful of my kids' friends who are being raised the same way benefit from these opportunities.  
 
For the very large number of my kids' friends that have parents that grew up in the outdoors but otherwise don't make it a priority to get their kids out hunting and fishing because they're delusional about their kids' athletic ability, I would say that these programs aren't making much of a difference.  Again, that's a very small sample size and totally anecdotal, but I don't see these parents doing anything different because there's a new or special opportunity for their kids.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

R*2 you are spot on with your post.

After for youth sports today, we went through the same experience, the pressure put on some of these kids by their parents n coaches is insane.
A couple falls ago we decided to sit out fall ball after having games 4 nights a week the year before which ran into winter clinics and classes right into spring baseball season. Best thing we ever did. Was a very enjoyable fall for everyone, so we scaled back even more after that.

I also agree that the programs don't help with recruitment, but those days are very enjoyable time time to enjoy the outdoors with kids. There are guys that abuse the seasons, but you will always have that. It is well worth it to see the kids have a blast.

One of the biggest issues to outdoor sports today for young and even older participants to stay interested is having ACCESS ! 
 
Without access or limiting access to streams , lakes, and woodlands one quickly looses interest in these sports. Limited access areas produces higher numbers of people in these areas and creates congestion along with non sportsmen like conduct ......all negative . 
 
Growing up in a small town in the 60's we had access to hunting and fishing only walking a mile or so from home. Those same areas are now truck terminals , homes, and businesses ....gone ! When we were able to drive one could ride in the country and rarely see a posted or keep out sign. Today it's almost all posted along with farm fields that look as nice as golf courses. Game lands are far and in between and over populated with people hunting or just over pressured. So today there are very limited public choices mostly toward hunting.
 
As outdoor access area choices shrink for hunting and fishing so do the future numbers.
 
The youth programs are great , gives them a taste without competing against adults in these programs , whether they help or not ?....time will tell.