NOTE: Quote attributed to Gary Alt
"Alt said a major problem is that the Game Commission is funded almost entirely by fees on hunters.

"That agency won't be able to function properly when the hunters are funding it entirely," Alt said. "Only after you get broader-based funding will you get broader-based representation."

Although Dr. Alt had once said that education was the key to pa wildlife management... he apparently thought changing the way the PGC is funded is the key. He would like hunters out of the equation, and have the PGC funded by a mix of non-sportsmens dollars and hunters dollars so that the biologists can dictate to the state what will be in wildlife management.

Many had always thought Alt was rather arrogant towards hunters, but now it seems his motives were very real in taking the power away from hunters to have influence in the wildlife management of the state (even though for 100 years SPORTSMEN have paid the bills in pa, and the state would not assist us with any tax dollars even for NON-GAME species).

I have to laugh at those people who thought Dr. Alt was just trying to make hunters see "more and bigger bucks", while he was trying to get Audubon, Conservancies, timber companies, pa legislators, DCNR, and anyone BUT hunters involved in dictating how deer hunting will be in pa..... hehehehe....

Man, there were a lot of hunters in pa who got punk'd !!!


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Former deer management head says he couldn't take Game Commission anymore

Associated Press


SCRANTON, Pa. - Gary Alt, who recently left his job as supervisor of the Pennsylvania Game Commission's deer management section, said he left because of his frustration with a "broken system."

Alt's departure on Friday at the age of 53 was described as a retirement, but Alt said he was leaving because a core group of well-organized hunters was limiting his ability to manage deer.

"I always said I would leave if I became ineffective, and I became ineffective. I did not want to take money from any employer if I couldn't deliver the services," Alt told The Tribune of Scranton.

In the job he started in 1999, Alt wrote measures designed to increase the number of large bucks and harvest more doe. His policies angered hunters because they lowered the overall deer population to maintain the habitat.

Alt maintains that the state's deer herd has been too large for more than 80 years, reducing plant diversity and the land's ability to sustain a variety of wildlife.

"It makes no more sense to let the deer herd go out of control than it does to allow pollutants to go into a stream," he said.

Alt said a major problem is that the Game Commission is funded almost entirely by fees on hunters.

"That agency won't be able to function properly when the hunters are funding it entirely," Alt said. "Only after you get broader-based funding will you get broader-based representation."

Game Commissioner Stephen Mohr said he receives about 50 complaints a day from hunters about the size of the deer herd.

"I think they'll either be repealed voluntarily or they'll be repealed forcibly," said Mohr, who supports antler restrictions, but not Alt's other regulations. "The hunters are not going to stand idle any longer."

Game Commission spokesman Jerry Feaser said the agency won't know what direction it will take for this year's hunting season until commissioners meet from Jan. 22 to Jan. 25 to set preliminary bag limits and dates for deer season. The final decisions will be set when the board meets in April."