Gift of game lands keeps giving

Posted on: November 22, 2015 | Bob Frye | Comments

Game lands 1APennsylvania is home to more than 1.5 million acres of state game lands.

Say what you want about the hunting in Pennsylvania, but at least sportsmen have plenty of places to go.

That’s not necessarily the case everywhere.

Our state, you may have heard, is now home to just more than 1.5 million acres of state game lands. The Pennsylvania Game Commission hit that milestone with the purchase of 2,109 acres added to game land 195 in Jefferson County earlier this year.

Think about that.

Sportsmen, through the commission, own more land than makes up the entire state of Delaware. There are game lands — offering no-fee, public-access hunting — in 65 of 67 counties, with Philadelphia and Delaware the only exceptions.

What a tremendous gift that is for sportsmen, and kudos to the people who in 1919 first decided to make buying property a priority.

What do you think hunters elsewhere around the country would give for that?

A lot, I’d wager, with what’s going on lately.

In Wisconsin, according to a story in Gannett Wisconsin Media, the Department of Natural Resources is looking to sell roughly 8,300 acres of public hunting land spread across 40 counties. It’s doing so under order of the state legislature, which wants to sell off 10,000 acres in what appears to be a budgetary move.

Fears are the sale, while small, is a “test run,” the paper said.

How so? Already a number of western states have done the same, taking control of public lands previously under federal ownership only to sell them to private interests to balance budgets.

In New Mexico, meanwhile, the Department of Game and Fish has long spent $200,000 a year to lease hunter access to similar properties, called public “trust” lands. Now, though, according to the Albuquerque Journal, the State Land Office wants that to increase to as much as $5 million annually.

The New Mexico Wildlife Federation, a sportsmen’s group, has called that “ludicrous.”

The fear is if prices go that high, the Game and Fish either will have to raise hunting license fees substantially or tell sportsmen they simply can’t access places they’ve hunted for generations.

What a disaster for sportsmen.

Fortunately, we’ve seen none of that here.

That’s not to say everything’s perfect. While the Game Commission’s land mass has been growing, the size of its food and cover crews — the people who work them — has not. That’s led to subtle changes.

The Game Commission’s new strategic plan says between now and 2020, it will “transition management practices on state game lands to create more young-forest habitats through timber harvest, planting native warm-season grasses and (using) prescribed fire.” It simultaneously will decrease use of “single-value practices” such as planting corn and other crops.

That may make perfect sense from a wildlife habitat standpoint. But don’t think it’s not about money, too.

There’s no way existing crews can work the extra ground, and there’s no money to hire more workers. Something has to give.

But compared to what’s going on elsewhere, that’s a small problem.

This story originally appeared at triblive.com/sports/outdoors.

Bob Frye is the everybodyadventures.com editor. Reach him at 412-838-5148 or bfrye@535mediallc.com. See other stories, blogs, videos and more at everybodyadventures.com.

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