With fewer hunters, up bag limits

Michael A. Sawyers

Fact is, the number of hunters is on the dip.

Should this trend continue — and there is no indication that it will end — fish and game departments throughout the country need to make some alterations because of it.

The primary problem will be shortage of money because of declining license sales. That could be taken care of pretty easily by increasing the cost of the license to cover the shortfall. Shoot, the Maryland Fisheries Service doubled the cost of a fishing license recently. That means, of course, the agency can sell half as many licenses and make the same amount of cash.

However, increases could continue to take place for only so long before they would actually cause hunters to stop buying licenses because of the cost.

In addition, I think the name “wildlife management area” should be changed to “public hunting area” or “wildlife area” in Maryland. There is precious little management taking place because of the financial situation. There used to be wildlife technicians actually stationed at Dan’s Mountain WMA to do the labor necessary to manage that parcel for wildlife. No longer.

I’m thinking, though, more about the fact that hunters, especially deer hunters, help to control animal populations that would otherwise grow to problematic levels.

I have touched on the subject here before. I believe that as the number of hunters dwindle, the number of animals that remaining hunters are allowed to bag should increase.

It should be relatively simple to create a formula to deal with the situation.

A state wildlife agency can simply look at the number of hunting licenses sold for a particular year, look at the number of deer killed and then compare that to the number they would like to see killed.

Such an investigation should allow the biologist/mathematicians to say “Well, since we are down to this many hunters now, we will need to increase the bag limit of deer to this certain level to reach that certain kill.”

You might as well just take the limit off of squirrels right now. Nobody is hunting them anyway. Take off the limit and make the season year round. Same thing with Canada geese, at least around here. Run the season from August to March. They are difficult to hunt and they learn quickly once shot at.

I contend that harvest numbers for critters such as deer and turkeys are not skyrocketing simply because there are fewer people hunting.

Some folks look at the harvest numbers, especially in years when they decrease, and say it is because there are fewer animals. I don’t think that is necessarily so, at least not all the time.

I spend a lot of time in the boondocks during the autumn months. I am one of those sorts of folks who agrees that I am seeing less and less rutting activity by our whitetail deer. I don’t think that is because there are fewer deer.

I think it could be because there are more deer and the deer don’t have to run around like crazy scraping, rubbing and chasing does helter skelter up hills and across fields.

The bucks just walk over to the nearest oak grove, spot a cutey and say “Hey, baby. You sure smell good.”

I have seen more dead deer on local highways this year than for many a moon; not as many, though, as during the hey days of deer hunting in Allegany County in the mid-1990s.

If we stay with this one-buck, one-doe per season (bow-rifle-muzzleloader) in Almost Maryland for a few more years I believe you will once again have those mid-1990s kind of deer numbers. There will, however, be fewer hunters to bag these animals, so you may not see the same harvest levels.

Also playing a large role is the loss of private lands upon which local people have hunted. Think about it. If you have not personally lost access to lands upon which you and your buddies use to hunt deer, I bet you know a person or two who has.

In a part of the world as geographically paltry as Almost Maryland, there is a big impact when you start adding up 200 acres here and 2,000 acres there upon which deer may no longer be taken for whatever reason... usually development.

Like you, and like Brian Eyler who heads up deer management for the Maryland Wildlife Service, I’ll be interested in seeing the entire deer harvest picture when bow season ends with the passing of January.

The firearms harvest of bucks in Allegany County was down a smidgen this year, 70-some animals. One possible influence on that number could be outstanding kills during the bow and early muzzleloader season.

Contact Outdoor Editor Mike Sawyers at msawyers@times-news.com.