Senior lifetime license holders may not need a permit to chase pheasants at some point in the future.
Photo: Pixabay
This is a brouhaha perhaps coming to an end.
A little less than a year ago, Pennsylvania Game Commissioners created a $25 pheasant hunting permit. All hunters chasing agency-stocked birds must have it.
Young hunters were exempt from needing one last fall. Old hunters were not.
That includes those who hold a senior lifetime hunting license.
That created a stir.
Some of those hunters – arguing that their lifetime license covered all small game at the time they bought it – felt they shouldn’t have to buy a permit.
The commission argued otherwise, saying pheasants are raised and stocked at great annual expense. Those expenses – related to buying pheasant chicks, running two game farms and delivering birds to the field – don’t exist with any other game species, said executive director Bryan Burhans.
“So that’s why pheasants were ‘picked on,’ if you will,” he said.
Commissioners said, too, senior hunters often have the most time to pursue the birds.
State lawmakers got pulled into the debate, as constituents called them to complain and ultimately seek help.
They’re closer to getting it.
Last September, state Rep. Bryan Cutler, a Lancaster County Republican, introduced House Bill 1764.
“This legislation will allow any hunter who had purchased a lifetime resident hunting license prior to July 1, 2017 to continue hunting pheasant, or any other species that may require a permit, previously included under their current license without incurring the additional fee, as they had expected upon purchasing their license,” he wrote in a memo explaining the bill.
Referred to the House of Representatives game and fisheries committee, the bill stalled.
It has new life, however.
Last May, state Rep. Parke Wentling, a Crawford County Republican, introduced House Bill 1409. It would reduce the cost of hunting licenses for nonresident disabled veterans.
That has moved. The bill passed the Senate on March 12 and is now before the House of Representatives game and fisheries committee.
What’s noteworthy is that the language of Cutler’s bill is amended into it.
The game and fisheries committee hasn’t voted on it yet. But lawmakers just returned to session today.
And some believe Wentling’s bill – in an attempt to generate goodwill for lawmakers in an election year – could pass before year’s end.
Even if the bill does become law, it may happen too late for this fall’s hunting season. Licenses go on sale mid-June, and pheasant hunting will begin in October.
That’s not a lot of time.
But that change could be coming.
The Game Commission isn’t opposing it, Burhans said.
It costs the agency about $3 million to raise the birds, Burhans said. That’s down from $5 million or so before the closing of two farms and some other changes.
The commission made $100,000 of that on the sale of pheasant stamps to senior lifetime license holders last year. That’s important, but hardly a giant source of revenue, Burhans agreed.
So board members don’t oppose the Wentling-Cutler bill, he said.
And in the meantime, the commission expects to stock more birds this fall. it is likely to be back to stocking 220,000, Burhansa said. That was the norm before last year’s dip to 170,000.
