the cost of hunting...

[bowtekhunter]

its crazy, tags have went up about $8 this year and licens about $10..i mean are prices just going to keep going up untill no one can afford to hunt any more (as if it isint already expensive enuff), the prices for a non resident licens in oregon last year was $76.50 this year it is $140.50!!! just the cost to apply for a controlled hunt has almost trippled.....this is insain

[hogdogs]

Bow, I pay 17.50 for a license and the ammo is up to a staggering 15 bucks for 20 .30-30 or 11 bucks for 15 slugs. To hunt the WMA I need a 50 dollar pass. So to start a season from nothing, I am gonna be right at 100 bucks with gas. I figure I MUST shoot 2 deer at 130 hoof weight each to make sure I stay under (way under is best) a dollar per pound. I consider hunting to be far cheaper than ground beef
Brent

[Ricky]

Prices in Ca. have gotten ridiculous. Since the ban on mountain lion hunting deer have gotten very scarce in places where they used to be plentiful. I haven't seen a game warden on a lake, river or in the field in decades. Really, DECADES! Where the f... is all that money going anyway?

[bowtekhunter]

if i was starving and hunting for meat only i would just be better off going to safeway..but wheres the fun in that?(unless they allow tree stands in the store???)

[sksfan22]

"the prices for a non resident licens in oregon last year was $76.50 this year it is $140.50!!! just the cost to apply for a controlled hunt has almost trippled"

That's ok, Non-residents should be more expensive... Oregon only has so much game,leave that to the Oregonians. It's hard enough to get a tag,let alone out-of-staters coming here. California hunters shoot at anything that moves (including myself and grandfather!)!!!

[bowtekhunter]

personaly i dont care if non residant prices go up but residant prices of licens have also went up about $15

[hogdogs]

if i was starving and hunting for meat only i would just be better off going to safeway..

See... the price of meat is what made me dust off the cob webs and go back after deer. I just can't justify 3+ buck per pound when game season allows me to drop good meat toters at a buck or less. I am 100% NOT a sport hunter. Straight up I see a furry meat sack and buck fever is foreign to me. My excitement only begins when I see the deer do the "death leap" and ball up. Then I get giddy thinking... "man momma is gonna be so proud of me and this meat..."
Brent

[mp4]

if they keep protecting the wolves in WI there won't be a reason to buy a liscense pretty soon.

[Brian Pfleuger]

NY decided that it would be a good idea to raise prices this year too. Would have cost me $96 for all my licenses. They were dumb enough, like they always are, to allow a grace period for lifetime licenses at the old price. I swear they actually lose money raising prices. Almost everyone I know finally sucked it up and went lifetime. It'll pay for itself in 7 years in my case and they'll never see another penny from me. They'd make more money if the fee was $35 like it used to be. No one went lifetime back then. Now almost everyone is either lifetime or just won't bother hunting at all. Yeah, good move beauracrats.

[reloader28]

Wyo resident deer is $43, nonresident is $312
resident elk is $57 nonresident is $577 as of 2009.
Who knows what next year will bring?

[jmr40]

Georgia started the lifetime license several years ago. At the time I was paying about $75/year for everything. I paid the $500 up front and am covered for all of my hunting and fishing in Ga. for the rest of my life, even if I move and am no longer a resident. I still have to pay $15 or so each year for a federal waterfowl stamp, but that ain't bad.

[musicmatty]

I wonder what the percentage of Hunters is, that hunt on private land thats owned by them or someone else with no license?

[hogdogs]

I wonder what the percentage of Hunters is, that hunt on private land thats owned by them or someone else with no license?

Matty, You will never get a decent idea about this as poachers that are successful rarely brag about it...
Brent

[shortwave]

In Ohio, land owners and different members of the family that are not required to buy license can only hunt their own land and are not considered poachers. Although I buy my license every year as I hunt elsewhere, not demanding landowners to obtain license is kind off a (very small) trade off for the distruction wildlife does to crops. Crop damage permits can also be obtained at no charge by property owners having alot of distruction done by wildlife to crops. Its all about the dollar. Plain and simple let the crop damage go unattended and crops are gonna go up for everyone. Deer don`t do the crop damage that hogs do but the damage deer,turkeys,coons etc. can do to soybean and corn in these parts can cost a farmer thousands. I would suppose the same holds true for the cash crops in other parts of the country. With the percentage of the total population that hunts verse`s the percentage of propetry owners, I`d be willing to bet the property owners that actually hunt are small. Most farmers around here could care less about hunting. They let me hunt their properties

[lt dan]

sad to see you guys that side of the pond frustrated about the same things that annoy us here in africa. however some of your prices seem a bit steep. over here i can expect to pay $750 for an eland. this animal can weigh about 1 metric ton. so my family will have meat for 6-8 months.

come to think of it it is no wonder we have so many american hunting friends.


p.s this is slightly more expensive than a head of cattle.

[fisherman66]

Last year I saw 4 or 5 other hunters in a WMA. This year's trip was 2 1/2 days instead of 5 days (last year) and we saw ~40 hunters; albeit we were on a different WMA this year. I think leases are pricing themselves out of hunters. I want to get to name this phenomenon....bubba-bubble.

I saw the strangest thing this weekend. Someone put a scent tampon with whatever you douse on one 20 steps into the woods right on the main foot path. As soon as we left the truck and walked under the canopy we see this guy on a log aiming his rifle at that tampon. Geeze, sum people.

[Hog Buster]

Yeah, maybe you all are right.... I spent 90% of my money on booze, wild women and hunting,.... the other 10% I wasted.......

[Farmland]

In the long run a hunting license is still the cheaper part of hunting though in the short view it may seem expensive when you are buying the hunting license.

There isn't much I can do about the price of hunting, though as I got older I stopped buying the additional tags for some of the hunting I seldom get to do. I just didn't see the point of spending x-amount of dollars for the extras if I was only able to hunt a day or maybe not at all.

This year I bought the basic Pa Hunting license and a Doe tag. I didn't buy the archery, muzzle loader and bear tag. It just wasn't worth the expense since I didn't know how time I could put into those seasons.

[kraigwy]

$43 for a deer tag, $57 for an elk tag, gas-oil-foo etc vs spending 10 days hunting with my grandaughter. Getting hit with snowballs glassing a hillside, the only elk camp in the area with snow men.

No brainer

Hunting would be cheap at 100 times that amount.

[fisherman66]

/\
.l.

priceless

[camper4lyfe]

Originally Posted by peetzakilla

NY decided that it would be a good idea to raise prices this year too. Would have cost me $96 for all my licenses. They were dumb enough, like they always are, to allow a grace period for lifetime licenses at the old price. I swear they actually lose money raising prices. Almost everyone I know finally sucked it up and went lifetime. It'll pay for itself in 7 years in my case and they'll never see another penny from me. They'd make more money if the fee was $35 like it used to be. No one went lifetime back then. Now almost everyone is either lifetime or just won't bother hunting at all. Yeah, good move beauracrats.

I went out and dropped the $600 for my lifetime this year. At the new rates, it'll pay for itself is 7 years. The one catch that I still need my lifetime archery, but that's "only" ~$230, but for now, it's $21/yr. I can handle that a lot more than the ~$100 it would have cost my the yearly super sportsman. Sure, I had to put it on a credit card, but the interest I paid (I think one month's worth, if that) was, by far, justified in the amount I saved in buying the lifetime.

Screw NYS bureaucrats.

[bowtekhunter]

theres no way the higher prices will stop me next year, or any year for that matter, but the people at the local sporting goods store where saying how alot of people wont pay the higher price to apply for tags next year? i just cant see that happening

[jdscholer]

I'm not one of them, but from the $40,000 pick-ups, $10,000 4-wheelers, God only knows how spendy camp trailers, and unlimited tanks of fuel for some of these bozos to road hunt with, I don't think a few hundred bucks for license and tags is gonna make much difference. I don't mean to deride those with the nice equipment, just the road hunting bozos.

I'm not happy about the price of license and tags, especially now that the grandson lives across the border and needs non-resident papers to hunt up here with me, but I try to keep things in perspective. I've dumped TONS of money on things that don't provide anything close to the fun that we get from our hunting habit.

I am a tightwad, and Mrs. jd is blessedly low maintenance. Our equipment is good quality, while being basically low-tech with few frills. (OK, I finally got one of those toilet TP's to go over the crapper) We seem to go hunting and camping in general a lot more than most of the folks I know who have more money tied up in their outfits. I know that we spend less for a full two weeks of elk hunt than it would cost for a couple of days golfing at a nice course with fancy accommodations. And yes, we find elk, and yes we often kill them, and the meat is a bonus not a bargain.

What's gonna suck is a few years from now when our Obamba adjusted dollars are worth about half what they are now. jd

[zahnzieh]

Politicians have figured out a revenue source! And who's going to complain except out-of staters i.e. non-voters!! Same thing with property taxes on vacation homes! Hunting is really becoming a luxury in many ways. And with all the fees/permits/licenses AND high prices on ammo, etc... No wonder less hunters head for the woods every year!

[Uncle Buck]

I agree with HogDogs and his point of view. But I would also like to add that I believe if the money we pay for the tags and licenses and what-ever else we have to buy, is put back into the conservation department, then I do not have much of a problem with it.
I always buy two tags for deer, although I usually only take one. I am allowed to get one tag free because I am a land owner, but I never take that. I figure my extra $17.00 might help the Missouri Conservation department improve their services.
But you do have a point also. Eventually they are going to price themselves out of a job. When it gets too expensive for the general public to hunt people will stop buying tags, license and ammunition.
If people no longer hunt, what will happen to the animal population? Look at some of the cities that are having problems with deer. Swope Park in Kansas City had to hire hunters to thin out their deer population.