Good luck with the politicians.
No one in their right mind would want them getting more involved than they already are. In the first place, few of them have the slightest clue about wildlife management.
The past two majority (GOP) chairmen of House Game/Fish were both pretty clueless. Pretty sure one wasn't even a deer hunter, or if he was, a pretty casual one?
The incoming majority chair is an exception, as he is both fair minded and pretty knowledgeable. The character once heading the Senate Game/Fish committee is also gone now.
Several members of that House committee are dumber'n stumps. Three of them still insist that hunting license numbers continue to decrease, while they've actually gone up a bit over the past five years or so. But that's but one indication of their level of involvement.
More than one politician likes to publicly jabber about "reigning in" the game commission to gain votes back home, while doing nothing positive to help anything.
And at this point, much of the current board of game commissioners are little more than politicians themselves now, pandering to the lowest common denominators among hunting license buyers: Those that complain the loudest, know the least and represent a minority among the 900,000+ people that buy a PA hunting license each year.
Think about that number for a minute. Most conclude that probably at least 800,000 of those license buyers hunt deer for at least a few days each year. Yet a thousand or so complaints to the commissioners and politicians each year, often result in changes to our deer seasons and antlerless allocations.
And a thousand or so complaints is a generous estimate. One Senator's aide said a few years ago, that they'd received "a lot" of complaints. When I asked him later what "a lot" amounted to, he thought maybe almost a hundred and not all 60(?) Senators receive complaints.
When pressed, many elected Reps and Senators will say they've received dozens and dozens of complaints and to them, that somehow translates into a majority of our 800,000 deer hunters.
Yeah, getting the politicians more involved is a great idea.
