PENNSYLVANIA State sets its sights on young hunters

Hunting helps to keep deer populations under control, officials say.
LANDISVILLE, Pa. (AP) -- When rifle deer season opens Monday, 17-year-old Mandie Holloway plans to be in the woods around her boyfriend's Sullivan County hunting cabin, hoping to bag her first deer.
To make sure she could get her license in time for the season's first day, when classes at her southern Lancaster County high school will be canceled, she attended a hunter and trapper education course at a middle school near Landisville with her cousin, Becky Gordon.
Stories by the men in her family sold Holloway on the sport.
"My dad's always done it. They say it's a rush when you actually get to see your first deer," Holloway said.
Many of the other 200 or so students were teenagers like Gordon and Holloway, a group the Pennsylvania Game Commission considers critical if they hope to reverse long-standing declines in the number of hunters.
The numbers
A half-million deer are expected to be killed this year, ranking Pennsylvania among the nation's most productive deer-hunting states, with the bulk of them taken during the two-week rifle season.
Since peaking at 1.3 million in the early 1980s, the number of Pennsylvania hunting licenses sold has dropped to just over 1 million, a decline experienced by other states. A national study determined that in 2001 the average hunter was 42 years old, an increase from 35 years old in 1980.
For now, the slide in sales of junior hunting licenses in Pennsylvania appears to have been halted. After peaking at 169,000 in 1976, junior licenses fell by 40 percent through 1999. But during that same year, a $9 junior license was introduced that combined the standard hunting-license privileges with archery, muzzleloading and fur trapping. Its popularity is cited as the main reason junior-license sales more recently have been growing, albeit slowly.
"Unlike other states that are continuing to see their junior-license sales drop, we've actually turned the corner -- modestly, mind you -- and we've actually seen junior-license sales increasing," Game Commission spokesman Jerry Feaser said. "Now obviously, we have a lot of work left to do."
Deer population control
Bringing in young people may be the only way to forestall the severe shortage of hunters that is projected to reach crisis proportions as the aging baby-boomer hunters disappear in the coming decades.
It's a potential crisis because Pennsylvania, like most states, uses hunters to control a deer population that would spiral out of control, destroying vegetation and presenting a practical problem for motorists.
"The numbers speak for themselves," said state Rep. David K. Levdansky, D-Allegheny, citing studies that predict a 50 percent decline in hunters over the next 15 years. "The baby boomers are getting older, and [young people] are less likely to be hunters."
The Pennsylvania Game Commission says the trend has been reversed through a combination of low-cost licenses, youth-only hunting days, organized "youth field days" and other outreach programs.
Hunter and trapper class instructor Dick Deibert, a retired schoolteacher, said finding an adult to teach teenagers the ropes can be the biggest obstacle for young people who are drawn to hunting.
"The kids just need somebody to get them out, and in many cases, we've got single-parent families," Deibert said.
Special events
Juniors-only hunting days for squirrel, waterfowl, turkey, pheasant and antlerless deer have grown in popularity, as have the youth field days held around the state, usually organized in conjunction with local sportsmen's groups.
About 200 participants, ranging from 8-year-olds to high school students, show up every June for the Crawford County Youth Field Day in Meadville. They get supervised hands-on experience with rifles, shotguns and bows, as well as an introduction to trapping, hunting dogs, boating safety and fishing.