Even when there is a decline or an increase in the number of youth purchasing a hunting license it doesn’t mean much of anything about youth interest in hunting unless you also know how many youth were of the age to purchase a license during that year or time period.

It is a long known fact that the demographics of the number of youth in our population has changed over the years. We simply didn’t and don’t have as many babies being born now as what we did during some of the past time periods. The first large baby boom occurred when the WWII veterans got home in the late forties. Then there was another smaller baby boom period when those original baby boomers reached the age they started having kids.

I think if you actually studied the demographics of those birth years and numbers you would probably find that we are in a period right now when second round baby boom children have reached adulthood yet before their children are of junior license age.

In short all anyone can do is speculate as to reasons without first collecting all of the data required to look at and fairly evaluate all of the factors and possibilities for the peeks and valleys in junior license sales.

R.S. Bodenhorn