I was noticing...Hunting license question

[Herb2]

For some reason, I got into a "discussion" about a proposal in Pennsylvania to increase their license/tag fees over the next several years.

Anyway, I started thinking about how MY state's license costs compare so I looked it up.

Mostly we were in line with PA ($20.00 license in PA, $25.00 for OK), but we had some fees etc. that struck me as either good ideas or complete dreck.

For instance OK has a reduced fee structure for younger hunters; both for the general license and for each deer or turkey tag; about 1/2 price for all of them.

I also liked the idea of charging the non-hunters for using any Department-owned lands. Most of our Public Hunting Lands and Wildlife Management Areas are owned by others (mainly the USCOE). These aren't affected but the Wildlife Department owns several tracts (some ten or twelve; maybe 35,000 acres) and those tracts require either a "Wildlife Passport" OR a Hunting License to access these lands.

Those are the good ideas. We also require THREE different licenses to trap bobcats, raccoons foxes or river otters; a hunting, trapping and a "Fur takers" licenses are needed. Geeze louise!! this is more complicated that doing Calculus in your head.

Also, we basically rape our non-residents. Our deer tag is $20.00 our NR tag costs $280.00. OK ain't exactly a "destination" location for whitetails so why charge NR 14 times the Resident rate? Elk is 6 times the cost, Bear is five times, and antelope doesn't seem to allow NR. Why are the ratios not similar?

I dunno, I was just noticing.