This probably won’t be as controversial. Free rarely is.
Last year, Pennsylvania Game Commissioners created a $25 pheasant hunting permit and required it of adult hunters – all adult hunters — pursuing agency-stocked pheasants.
That included senior lifetime license holders.
That caused more than a bit of consternation. Seniors who thought the commission was breaking a contract with them complained to lawmakers, and at least one introduced a bill to exempt them from the pheasant permit.
That hasn’t gone anywhere and unless that changes, seniors will need to buy a permit again in 2018-19 if they want to chase ringnecks.
Junior hunters will likely need to get a permit, too.
At their recent meeting, commissioners gave preliminary approval to a proposal requiring junior hunters to get a pheasant permit.
Theirs, though, will be free. Even the add-on fees associated with all licenses – the $1 issuing agent fee collected by the license seller and the 90-cent transaction fee collected by the operator of the license sales system – will be covered by grants, said Randy Shoup, chief of the commission’s bureau of wildlife protection.
The reason for creating the permit is simple: information.
Commissioners said the idea is to “quantify the number of youth participating in pheasant hunting annually.”
That’s an unknown right now.
Prior to the 2017 pheasant season, estimates of the number of pheasant hunters were just that, estimates.
It now has a hard figure, though. The agency sold 42,767 permits.
That information is as valuable as the nearly $1 million in revenue the stamps generated, said one long-term agency employee turned outsider.
“You finally replaced estimates of hunters with real numbers. What you have done is provided data where there was none,” said Dennis Duza, a retired commission employee who first pushed for creation of a pheasant permit.
Creating a youth permit would provide still more information, he added.
“This is a good move, as once again it allows managers to secure actual data instead of relying on estimates,” he said.
Others support the junior permit, too.
Harold Olay, president of the North Central PA Chapter of Pheasants Forever, said his membership has discussed the idea of a free permit and supports it so that the commission can get more details on just how many junior pheasant hunters are out there.
There’s even a chance the permit could bring in money to the commission.
If it can show how many junior bird hunters it has, that data “might entitle the agency to additional funding for its pheasant program through federal hunter recruitment funding initiatives,” a commission release said.
The junior permit is not a done deal. Commissioners must still give the idea final approval.
That’s expected, though, likely as early as the board’s next meeting in April.
Some changes – not yet revealed – could be coming to the pheasant program.
But in the meantime, commissioners say they’re happy with how it’s working out.
Early on, the commission estimated it might sell 60,000 pheasant permits, said commissioner Jim Daley of Butler County. But that figure was floated when the board was still debating whether to require junior hunters to buy a $25 permit.
They rejected that idea last year, he noted. But the estimate on sales never reflected that.
“The thing is, when that projection was made, there was still the junior pheasant stamp in play, which would have been 15,000 or more people. So once that came off, nobody said, ‘Oh, well that 60,000 isn’t right anymore,’” Daley said.
So the projections were actually “pretty accurate,” he noted.
Commissioner Brian Hoover of Chester County expects participation to pick up, too.
“I think not getting all of the people involved the first year was a little difficult. But I think we’ll see that number increase as we go on,” he said.
Commission president Tim Layton of Somerset County agreed. All of the hunters he’s heard from — who actually bought a permit and went hunting this past fall – were satisfied with the hunting, the birds and the season, he said. The ones he heard from were all “extremely happy with everything that happened this year.”
“I don’t recall a complaint,” Layton said.
As they talk about the pheasant program, others will want to experience the hunting themselves, he said.
Bryan Burhans, executive director of the commission, said the importance of the permit can’t be understated either. It costs money to raise and stock birds, he said.
“This helps us carry that program forward and secure the program,” Burhans said.
Two other pheasant changes likely
Game Commissioners are expected to make two other changes regarding ringneck pheasants in Pennsylvania.
First, the commission is heading toward dissolving the Somerset wild pheasant recovery area.
One of four left, it was created in 2009. The commission, together with Pheasants Forever and private landowners, did extensive habitat work meant to support birds. Wild pheasants were imported from the Midwest and released on those properties. All hunting was prohibited.
The idea was to see if the birds could take hold and, eventually, sustain themselves in huntable numbers.
It didn’t happen.
“The number of wild pheasants there is not zero. But it’s very low,” said Ian Gregg, game management division chief for the commission.
Lack of habitat, severe weather and other factors are thought to blame.
If the area is officially dissolved – final approval must come in April – the area will open to either-sex pheasant stocking.
Second, commissioners gave preliminary approval to a rule applicable to private pheasant stockings. Hunters who buy their own pheasants and stock them on their own lands won’t need a permit to chase them.
That was the rule this past fall. But that was never the intention, commissioners said.
This rule change is meant to fix that. Final approval of that rule change must also follow, likely in April.
