Properties enrolled in the cooperative access program are to be identified with signs like this one, hanging from a barn wall.
Bob Frye/Everybody Adventures
It holds, in theory, giant potential.
The Pennsylvania Game Commission manages a cooperative hunter access program. Under its guidelines, private landowners agree to allow hunting on their properties in return for some perks. The most popular is increased law enforcement by wildlife conservation officers.
Landowners retain control of their properties. And hunters still have to ask permission before entering them.
But the goal is link sportsmen and farmers.
And that’s not always happening.
The program has been around since 1936. There are currently more than 13,000 landowners who own more than 2.2 million acres involved, said John Taucher, public lands section chief for the commission. They’re spread across 66 of the state’s 67 counties.
Yet, he admits, awareness of the program is low among both hunters and property owners.
Hunters in particular feel as if they need more information, said commission president Brian Hoover.
“I think that a big complaint we hear a lot is that they don’t know about the lands,” Hoover said.
He asked if the commission might better help hunters find them. He wondered if that might include listing cooperating properties by GPS coordinates or addresses.
Some of that information is already available on the commission website, said Pete Sussenbach, head of the its bureau of wildlife habitat management. Visitors to the site can pull up a map showing the location – minus an actual address – of lands.
The problem is people don’t know how or where to look for it, he said.
“It’s well hidden,” agreed commissioner Jim Daley of Butler County.
The commission is trying to figure out how to change that, Taucher said. It’s looking to get information out via its own magazine, “Game News,” and in various farming publications. And a brochure is also in development.
The commission will use electronic communications and social media, as well, Sussenbach said. But that alone won’t work, he added.
He noted that about 75 percent of co-op landowners saying they never use social media, and almost 50 percent saying they never use email.
Sussenbach said he suspects many hunters have similar habits regarding social media. And if that’s true, he said, the commission must find ways to reach them, too.
To learn more
Want to check out the Game Commission’s cooperative access program? You can do so by clicking here.
