The magazine-sized digest that hunters and trappers have received in Pennsylvania for more than a decade may be going away.
Bob Frye / Everybody Adventures.
The same problem that’s hurt the newspaper and magazine industry is hitting the Pennsylvania Game Commission.
That may prompt a change.
Back in 2004, the commission switched from printing a pocket-sized digest of hunting and trapping rules and went to an 86-page, magazine-sized one. The idea was that the commission could sell advertising in it and essentially get the publication to pay for itself, said executive director Matt Hough.
That worked then. It isn’t working anymore.
Steve Smith, chief of the agency’s information and education bureau, said the agency’s net cost to print the digest in 2004, after advertising revenues, was $12,000. This past year – with advertisers increasingly going away from print to spend their money online — it was more than $190,000.
“So that cost has gone up pretty significantly. And it’s only going to keep climbing,” Smith said.
At the same time, people are increasingly turning to the commission’s website to find information, Smith said that in the three months from October through December, more than 600,000 people went there to check seasons and bag limits information, and more than 300,000 opened the electronic version of the digest.
Given those two factors, Smith’s staff is recommending the commission cut back dramatically on the number of digests it prints.
Hunters would no longer get a printed version when buying their license, he said. Instead, they’d get a “pocket guide,” which would be a single sheet of 8.5X11-inch paper, folded into thirds, that lists things like seasons and bag limits, shooting hours, minimum orange requirements, how to report harvests and a little more.
They’ll also get envelopes for mailing in doe tags and pre-printed postcards for reporting harvests. But that’s it.
The hope, he said, is to give hunters enough information while allowing the commission to break even on printing costs.
Hunters who still want the full-size digest will be able to get one, he said. But they’ll have to buy it, for approximately $5.
Commission president Brian Hoover of Delaware County said one of the biggest complaints from hunters over the past 20 years has been the elimination of the old pocket guide. Hunters liked being able to carry it in a pocket.
“So why don’t we do away with the ads and go back to the small pocket guide and just supply it?” Hoover asked.
Hough said that the commission was able to find just one printed who could produce such a book back in 2004. It, too, was getting more expensive every year. That’s one of the reasons the commission went away from it, he said.
Smith, though, said going back to such a digest is still possible, based on hunter comments.
“If we get those comments, that this isn’t enough, we’ll take a look at that. We’re not locking into anything for the future,” he said. “This is just what we want to do for this year and see how it’s received.”
Going away from a printed digest is not unprecedented. Many state wildlife agencies – facing similar financial constraints — are printing licenses only and putting the onus on the hunter to know the rules, Smith said. He encountered that while hunting in Colorado this past fall.
“I bought five licenses from five states last year and Pennsylvania was the only one to give me a digest,” added Rich Palmer, deputy executive director for field operations for the commission.
Commissioner Bob Schlemmer of Westmoreland County said he likes the idea of providing just the one-page sheet highlighting a few rules.
“This is perfect. This is a winner,” he said.
Commissioner Jim Daley of Butler County said he likes the idea, too, though he suggested perhaps using bigger sheets of paper. As it is now, the sheet mentions that there are different wildlife management units, but provided no map of them. Going to legal-sized paper might allow for one, he said.
Staff will look into that, Smith said. A final draft will have to adopted fairly soon, though, he added.
Licenses go on sale in June, so that new format will have to be ready before that.
And in case you’re wondering, the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission has no plans to go away from a printed digest. That’s because its costs are actually going down.
According to press secretary Rick Levis, the commission spent between $61,000 and $67,00 to print 1.3 million copies of its 48-page digest in 2006.
In 2016, it printed 900,000 copies of a 36-page digest at a cost of $32,804.
