Hunting and Fishing Licenses

[BarryBobPosthole]

The Oklahoma Wildlife Department has been posting ads on FB encouraging people to buy licenses and get out to hunt and fish.
Nowadays, it is common to see many posts condemning having to buy a hunting or fishing license, saying it should be free to provide for their family, its a kings tax, and so on and so on. I know there have been contrarians forever but never have I seen them at this level.
What is your opinion? should we be free to hunt and fish and not even have a wildlife department?

BKB

[quercus alba]

No on the free yes to a wildlife dept. Be kinda like defunding the police. Unfortunately it's a necessary evil.

[DeputyDog]

What most of the anti-hunters and probably those that don’t want to have to pay for licenses don’t realize is how much of that money is used for conservation, whether buy the purchase of land or restoration, etc.

Indiana started to offer lifetime hunting, fishing, and trapping licenses in the early 90’s. They were expensive, but not outrageous. I jumped on that and bought a lifetime hunting and fishing for right around $750. It included all stamps or tags needed for specific species, so the only thing I needed to buy to hunt or fish anything in Indiana was a Federal duck stamp.

I was in my early 20’s so I was hunting and fishing just about everything and it was only costing me $20 bucks or so a year. I figured that it paid for itself in about 5-6 years. The nice thing was it included any future tags or stamps as well so if any of the requirements changed you were still covered.

After a few years the price on the licenses doubled and then the sale of them were discontinued a few years after that. The reason was that Federal funding was based on a percentage of annual license sales revenue which was rapidly falling due to the number of lifetime licenses out there. The amount of Federal money was decreasing to a point that Indiana felt they had no other choice. Thankfully they still honor the lifetimes. My Dad had received a lifetime hunting and fishing license as a benefit for being a WWII veteran shortly after he returned from the Pacific. Those were only honored for a couple of years before they were all revoked.


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[Arty]

No it shouldn’t be free and yes we need a wildlife dept
In Virginia if you are hunting on YOUR land, you don’t need a hunting license.

“Resident or nonresident landowners, their spouses, their children and grandchildren and the spouses of such children and grandchildren, or the landowner’s parents, resident or nonresident, do not need a license to hunt, trap or fish (on inland waters) within the boundaries of their own lands.”

You do have to be tags though for deer bear and turkey I do believe.


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[Chicken Dinner]

If we want to go back to the days of no game to hunt (and now no public land to do it on), sure do away with both.


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[HideHunter]

I've never complained about the cost of hunting/fishing licenses.. without "management" it would all be over in a heart beat. Easier now, though - I have lifetime hunt/fish/trap..

[Big Muddy]

I'm pretty sure I've mentioned this previously, but I'm old enough to remember the early 1950's, when a local farmer came rushing into the local service station, and said he had spotted deer tracks in one of his muddy cotton fields, next to the Quiver River.....back then, that was an event pretty much akin to someone saying that a space alien had landed in their front yard, and ya'll come look-see.
Everyone with a pickup truck loaded up the town folks, and headed to the river.....sure enough, there was a set of deer tracks headed down one of the cotton row middles, and ended at the river's edge, where the deer, evidently, swam across the river.....everybody was amazed because until then, deer were virtually non-existent in the MS delta.
Soon after, the wildlife conservation folks got involved, and helped us protect and manage the deer herd, and within 5 years, we had a small, yet huntable deer population.....we harvested bucks only for the next 15 years before we harvested any does.
Now, years later, thanks to our wildlife conservationists and law enforcement, we have a thriving and healthy deer herd.
So, yes, I support wildlife conservation, hunting/fishing licenses, game laws, and bag limits.

[BarryBobPosthole]

Interesting comments! Like DD I have a lifetime combo. But I think what threw me off was ‘early 20’s in the early 90’s’. Is that even mathematically possible?

I think we need both, but I’ll caveat that with I don’t always agree with how the State boys spend our money but its theirs to decide. Yes its a tax, but one that is needed. Native elk, buffalo, deer, and bearswere hunted to extinction in our zone and only cane back through the basic conservation measures that our game and fish have done. They also do good work on fisheries here. My main beef on the fishery side(no pun) is that they don’t spend enough money on true water conservation. habitat is where its at in the outdoors and we’re peeing in our own bathwater right now.

Anywho, that’s my .02

BKB

[DeputyDog]

I can remember when is was a kid in the 70’s that it was the talk of the town of people saw more than a couple deer here in NE Indiana. It was kind of the same thing, word would get out that someone saw a group and there would be a line of cars driving the area to see them.

It was the same way with turkeys when I was in high school. It was big news of anyone saw a wild turkey.

The deer got to the point that they made the seasons too liberal. At one point I could take a buck in archery season, shotgun season, and muzzleloader season as well as 8 antlerless in my county alone. They cut it back to a single buck a year and just a couple of antlerless. Now we even have a spring and fall turkey season where the fall is either sex.

I think we all agree that none of that would have been possible without game management provided by license fees.


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[Arty]

Ddog,
Same with turkey when I was a kid hunting in Kentucky (late 80’s, early 90’s). You didn’t see turkey. Ever. And if you did it was a big deal.

Now the damn things are everywhere.


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[Thumper]

Reminds me of gators down here. I was born and raised in Florida and did tons of camping on rural lakes. I never saw a gator in the wild. One night my uncle took me out on a lake which was waaaay out of town at the end of about 15 miles of dirt road. We went spotlighting and I actually got to see a couple of eyes way out on the lake. Gator hunting was banned when I was about 10 years old and the ban lasted something like 25-30 years before gator hunting was re-introduced. These days, you can’t pass by a drainage ditch without seeing a gator in it.

[BarryBobPosthole]

So who are these anti-license anti-wildlife department people?

BKB

[Thumper]

I dunno, YOU'RE the one who told us about 'em! :huh

P-hole quote:


Nowadays, it is common to see many posts condemning having to buy a hunting or fishing license, saying it should be free to provide for their family, its a kings tax, and so on and so on. I know there have been contrarians forever but never have I seen them at this level.

[DeputyDog]

So who are these anti-license anti-wildlife department people?

BKB

You tell us. You’re the one that started the conversation.

Sounds like sovereigns to me. The same ones that think they don’t need a driver’s license or plates on their cars.
Claim it’s a violation of interstate commerce laws.

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[airbud7]

when I was a kid here in Aiken County we had no deer but was loaded with quails....now there's deer in the front yard and I haven't seen a quail in 20 years...

where did the quail go?

[Buckrub]

when I was a kid here in Aiken County we had no deer but was loaded with quails....now there's deer in the front yard and I haven't seen a quail in 20 years...

where did the quail go?

70 million feral cats.

[DeputyDog]

We used to have quail here too, then the farmers started to rip out all the fence rows and eliminated the habitat and cover for them leaving them vulnerable to predators.


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[BarryBobPosthole]

Fence row to fence row planting here accomplished the same result. The demise of fur bearer trapping and varmint hunting contributed to it too.
But its mainly habitat related it seems.
BKB

[airbud7]

neat little article on the quail disappearance from 1993...

National Wildlife Federation ...The Case of the Disappearing Quail.

https://www.nwf.org/Magazines/National-Wildlife/1993/The-Case-of-the-Disappearing-Quail

[DeputyDog]

That was an informative read.


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[BarryBobPosthole]

Thanks AB!

BKb

[quercus alba]

When I was a kid my grandpa taught me what he called a covey call. Actually, I think it's called an assembly call when they're separated. If he could hear Bob White whistle, he could call him up pretty regular and I'd bust him with my old Benjamin. I've eat several we've whistled up.

[BarryBobPosthole]

When we were about 17, my buddy Mallard Fillmore and I were deer hunting and he let a big buck slip by him while he was sitting on a stump whistling at a covey he’d busted walking in. I got a lot of miles out of the telling of that old memory. The buck has grown a bit too.

BKB

[quercus alba]

Deer and fish always get bigger with age. The shots get longer too. I remember well that 16 lb bass I fought for 3 hours on 4 lb line before he broke me off when he wrapped me around a stump.

[BarryBobPosthole]

Anybody who’s ever stepped on a covey of quail before daylight knows no exaggeration is necessary!
BKB