PENNSYLVANIA, USA — Officials are optimistic about the state of outdoor recreation in the Commonwealth following the release of The Pennsylvania Game Commission and Pa. Fish and Boat Commission's 2023 annual reports.
The Pennsylvania Game Commission and Pa. Fish and Boat Commission presented their annual report to the state Senate Game & Fisheries Committee last week. Among a number of highlights, new data from the report also indicated that fishing and hunting license sales are down from previous years.
Pennsylvania issued more than 790,000 fishing licenses and sold nearly 845,000 general hunting licenses in the last fiscal year. These numbers are down compared to levels seen during the COVID-19 pandemic, where hunting licenses were slightly up and Pa. fishing licenses peaked at more than 934 thousand in 2020.
It’s a decreasing trend states are facing nationwide. However, according to officials the numbers are deceiving here in Pennsylvania and are not as concerning.
"Even while the trend across the country is that fishing licenses, hunting licenses all of those things have been trending downwards, here in Pennsylvania we are actually holding steady and above the pre-pandemic levels," said Mike Parker, communications director for the Pa. Fish and Boat Commission.
The Pa. Fish and Boat Commission says they’ve been able to take advantage of the spike in fishing interest during the pandemic and actually exceed the 2019 pre-pandemic number of 777,000 licenses sold.
"People flock to the outdoors, [to do] fishing, boating, hunting, hiking, camping, things people can do to get outside and recreate," said Parker. "Once they dip their toe in the water, then we find people really enjoy it and they’re there for the long haul."
For the Pa. Game Commission, changes in key hunting dates including moving the opening day for firearms deer season from Monday to Saturday, and last year’s implementation of online hunting license sales are putting Pennsylvania back on the positive track.
"We started the year at a much faster pace," said Travis Lau, communications director for the Pa. Game Commission. "We had many more hunting license sales far earlier in the sales season than have ever previously been the case."
According to the Pa. Game Commission, this fiscal year they have already surpassed last year’s number of hunting license sales with six months still left in the season.
It's efforts they hope to continue to attract hunters both old and new to inch back closer to the peak of 1.3 million hunters Pennsylvania saw in 1982 and ultimately keep an important Pa. tradition alive.
"You have to do everything you can to recruit new hunters, to retain existing hunters," said Lau. "Anywhere we can make a positive change, it goes a long way in keeping the rank strong and preserving our hunter heritage which is strong here in Pennsylvania."
Despite the decreasing hunter trend from previous years, Pennsylvania is still only second to Texas in the entire country for the number of hunters in the state.