Who is US? I think Mr Realist might actually be aPGC plantseeings how he refered to the PGC as "us".

Make no mistake, the people who mismanage the agency are very concerned with these figures.They too surely took note of the terrible figuresconcerning the nonresidents and archery figures. That really has to hurt.Joe Neville will use every opportunity to take cheap shots at the USP, but the figures are PGC figures. The USP had nothing to do with them.No one juggled the books on this one. The figures and facts speak for themselves.

Certainly these horrible numbers will lower as the hunting season approaches and reluctant hunters give in and buy a license. Perhaps some hunters just want to make the PGC sweat. Others really have given up and are going out of state. Out of staters aren't coming to Pennsylvania.Pennsylvania had a 6% drop in license purchases last year (down from an initial 11%). If PA loses another 6% the monitary loss will be significant(12% over 2 years). Should it reach 15 or 20% or greater this yearyou can be sure there will be some management changes. There should have been a management shake-up when hunter participation fell to 6%. Any respectable corporation that had that much of a loss would have taken the loss seriously and moved to correct the matter. The PGC has chosen to "Stay The Course." (Much like the Titanic.)

It's called INCOMPETENCE, and we pay for it in more than just dollars.

I wonder if there are any figures for license sales in the surrounding states, WV, NY, MD, DL, NJ. Now thier figures would be very interesting........

Ah, now the gangs all here. DD,er I mean deerfly, you've had several days to stick the numbers in the blender and thats the best you can come up with? Is your spinner broke?

Neville gave a perfectly plausible explanation for the large differences for the numbers and no one here has come up with a realistic counter to his sensible explanation.

Put this in your spinner DD... How is it that doe licnese demand seems roughly the same as this time last year. Lest you forget, NR's had their go at things this past week.

Things arent perfect with our deer managenment and probably never will be but we could have two million deer dasrted tagged and numbered and the USP crowd would still tell us there's not enough deer.

I'd still rather have our herd managed by biologists that can admit theyre struggling with their model than have our deer herd managed by LarryDarryl andDarryl.

[quote][I'd still rather have our herd managed by biologists that can admit theyre struggling with their model than have our deer herd managed by LarryDarryl andDarryl.
/quote]

Note: PGC Deer Biologist demonstratingagency management techniques.

I would not use the word "rational" when talking about self-serving spin and without more support that's all it is. If an accounting firm made a statement like that in a footnote to a certified income statement they would be vulnerable to sanction.

If he wanted to tooffer a more convincing explanation, he would supply the figures from the most recent two year period that hadsimilar time discrepencies and show that 40% can equal 5% in the real world.Most people's minds areopen to fully supported argument.

I'll repeat my earlier question: is a 5% loss of hunters (and the resulting multi-million dollar negative enonomic impact) acceptable and if so, why?

i guess i have to comment.will try to make it short but to point. real hunters are getting older and not buying license this year, why, no deer.next, young hunters dont see deer, so they dont want to hunt.next, wives dont want husband hunting or at camp now.YOU COULD GIVE HUNTERS 50 SUNDAYS,BUT WIVES ARE NOT GOING TO ALLOW IT.woods is not great for deer but deer are not problem. problem is DCNR will not cut trees.pgc is letting dcnr tell them what to do.pgc knows that soon they will be working for dcnr.look at pa outdoor show tonight. those duds were all excited. they are going to have show on lizards.he almost peed his pants. no 1 word about deer anymore on this pa outdoor pgc show.if we cant all see what is happening, we are blind. i see day very soon that our guns are going to be next. with lack of hunters the eco,s will take over. eco,s are rendell,deberantius,dcnr and sadly, pgc.

First Monday in Aug. of 2003, was Aug. 4 (WMUs started). First Monday in August of 2004, was Aug. 2. First Monday last year was Aug. 8. This year it was Aug. 7. All were the first day for an antlerless application to be accepted.

OK Joe Neville, what yearly percentage loss (of hunters)is deemed acceptable to the Executive Staff and Board of Commissioners?

What plans does the PGC have to stem the loss of hunters? Is there any plan at all?

Um, last time I checked, there were 7 days in a week. So if the 8th was a Monday, then the 1st would have been a Monday as well.

2005 licenses went on sale Monday August 1

As for the NR's, a little bit of time will tell. I know when I used to have to drive an hour to get a WV license, I tended to put it off till the last minute.

I would not be surprised if NR sales are off a little bit more than resident sales but it wont be the apocolypse that DD implies. I'dbet thatHR is having some additional negative effect on NR sales simply because the Northern WMU's where the deer densities are a bit down have traditionally been popular with NR's (at least in the two I've hunted over the years.) We used to get tons of Ohio hunters in the ANF area. If Ilived in Ohio these days , I'd be looking west and not east if I wanted to hunt outside my state. Not because of quantity but because of quality.

Yep, it was Aug. 1 last year, dunno how I did that. Looked up the dates on my old check registers to see when a check had been written for the doe applications prior to last year's.

The 2005 checkwas written on July 29. Sorry for the error.