GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ) – As gun deer season approaches, officials are concerned about a downward trend in the number of licenses being purchased.
Gun deer hunting licenses have declined by 5.8 percent over the past 20 years.
Jason Stein, Research Director at the Wisconsin Policy Forum, joined WTAQ’s Morning News with Matt & Earl on Thursday.
He thinks there’s a handful of reasons behind this trend.
“There’s the rise of electronics and the shrinking pool of adult teachers for young people,” he explains. “And then there’s the lack of access to hunting land as well, so it’s a variety of factors at play.”
Officials are concerned this trend might not only continue but also intensify.
“The people that still hunt are an increasingly older group,” says Stein. “People start to reach a point where they physically can no longer pursue the sport and then you start to see this really big dropoff.”
And a drop in licenses means a drop in revenue for the state, which creates an unintended ripple effect.
“This has been for generations really a big engine to power conservation in the state,” explains Stein. “If you’re someone that enjoys looking at Trumpeter swans or Bald eagles or you hike on lands that are not state parks, the money that is thrown off from these licenses help to pay for all those programs.”
Stein thinks a solution to this issue doesn’t fall squarely on the shoulders of hunters.
“How do you reach out to other groups that have not necessarily contributed in the same way in the past?” he asks. “This might be people that hike, this might be people that bird watch, this might be people who have a paddle board that they are using on Wisconsin waterways.”
There also is a hope that as technology expands and registration becomes more convenient that trends will reverse.
“There have been times that I’ve bought a license and went hunting in an afternoon that I probably would not have done if I could not have quickly purchased that tag over the internet,” explains Stein.
Gun deer season begins throughout the state this Saturday morning.
