It means that the vast majority of states fund their wildlife management through general tax dollars that their legislative branch of government allocates to the agency in charge of their wildlife on an annual bases.

Those states obviously trust their Legislature to keep hunting and wildlife management out of the hands of the anti-hunters and other extremists.

In Pennsylvania there are no general fund moneys coming from the Legislature to management any type of wildlife, including those that aren’t hunted, and it is all funded with hunter’s dollars through license fees. The Pennsylvania hunters say they don’t want to pay more for a hunting license yet they also say they don’t want anyone other then hunters funding wildlife management because they are afraid the anti-hunters and other adverse groups will have too much say in wildlife management.

My question is that if that isn’t a problem in all of those majority of the states across this nation why would it be a problem here. Is it that our hunters don’t trust their legislature to have the same respect for hunter interests and built in safeguards as all of those other states? I am just trying to understand just what it is hunters are so afraid of and why, as far as it relates to using general funds in wildlife management. It works everywhere else, I don’t understand why it wouldn’t work here, too.

R.S. Bodenhorn