Final deer season harvest numbers

[Tipmoose]

I'm specifically looking at recruitment. A 41% drop in youth licenses sold with a fairly consistent decline curve over the last decade. While harvest per youth hunter is up, the overall harvest trend is down.

Compare this with the consistent rise in reduced cost permits and licenses and it points to an aging population of hunters that aren't being replaced by a new generation. If youth are the future of our sport then these are very disturbing trends that don't bode well for the future of hunting.

Yep. That's not a good trend. Gonna have to import a lot more leasers it looks like.

 

[LonewolfNopack]

This data seems to indicate just the opposite. From 2011-2020 all hunting license sales decreased from 424K to 348K. That's a decline of 18% I believe.

https://ohiodnr.gov/static/documents/wildlife/historic-licenses/Pub+5063.pdf

A quick Google search brought up a CD article from last year states 406k total deer permits were sold as of January of 2023, up significantly from the most previous years numbers. Still not sure what this past seasons number is, but I bet it has continued to trend up. So like I mentioned, the number is increasing. Admittedly I'm not sure how we find the number of unique hunters vs number of hunters buying multiple tags, other then comparing that to hunting license sales. While the data includes "free" tags and licenses, I'm not sure that means or includes landowner tags, and I'm thinking that it doesn't....which would be a key variable in our currently situation as more and more folks buy ground specifically for deer hunting.

 

["J"]

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I think the partial decline in free license #’s are the population born before 1937 who are no longer with us.
Disabled vets could be another part of the equation.
The exemption from a license iirc aren’t counted in the free category.

 

[at1010]

I'm specifically looking at recruitment. A 41% drop in youth licenses sold with a fairly consistent decline curve over the last decade. While harvest per youth hunter is up, the overall harvest trend is down.

Compare this with the consistent rise in reduced cost permits and licenses and it points to an aging population of hunters that aren't being replaced by a new generation. If youth are the future of our sport then these are very disturbing trends that don't bode well for the future of hunting.

Thanks for clarifying! I sure do agree - very scary trend.

 

[giles]

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I think the partial decline in free license #’s are the population born before 1937 who are no longer with us.
Disabled vets could be another part of the equation.
The exemption from a license iirc aren’t counted in the free category.

According to your link, I would think they are.