Hunting is one activity the virus hasn’t knocked down

License sales jump 12% across the U.S.

The coronavirus — and attempts to slow its spread — have changed Americans’ lives and culture. With stores, restaurants and indoor recreation venues closed or restricted, people found that the outdoors are always open. Nearly all forms of outdoor recreation saw record-setting participation, and it is no surprise that includes hunters.

Nationwide, hunting license sales increased 12%, adding 1 million new hunters, according to the National Shooting Sports Foundation, a firearms trade group. Gun sales increased, too, but much of that has been attributed to self-defense handgun sales. Skyrocketing firearm sales caused a nationwide ammunition shortage, with one manufacturer reporting an unprecedented $1 billion backlog in orders.

Evidence suggests that COVID-19 did impact hunting in Pennsylvania. License sales to new hunters and those who didn’t hunt the previous five

5,000 more than in 2019, according to the Game Commission. Early sales of 2020-21 licenses were up nearly 5%. Steve Smith, Game Commission information and education bureau director, said in August that COVID-related unemployment and new hunting opportunities were expected to contribute to high-volume hunting in the fall. “We have noticed from previous years a relationship between unemployment rates and license sales. However, we don’t have any research data to support that yet for this year,” said Mr. Smith. With indoor spaces closed, the state Hunter- Trapper Education classes, required of all first-time hunters, were held online only and graduated 27,867 hunters. Though the Game Commission is pleased to see more Pennsylvania hunters taking to the woods and fields, state officials would like to know why the state’s increase was proportionally smaller than in other states. “License sales are up, ending November about 3.7% ahead of where they were last year at that time,” said state Game Commission spokesman Travis Lau. “So that’s significant. It’s more than 30,000 additional hunters. What we don’t know is what role COVID-19 has played in it.” Some hunters say the pandemic has not changed their habits. Michael Nolf, a teacher at Pittsburgh Classical Academy, dropped a 9-point whitetail in Allegheny County during the archery season, before the opening of the firearm deer hunt. The school’s closure forced him to teach his sixth-grade social studies classes online, but it didn’t change his work schedule or cut into his time in a tree stand. “COVID hasn’t really affected my ability to get out,” said Mr. Nolf, a West End resident. In Forward, former state Rep. Dave Levdansky said virus-related closures gave him more time in Allegheny County woodlands, where he killed an 8-point buck during archery season. “It gave me more of an excuse to stay in the woods from sunrise to sunset [because] I wasn’t running errands,” he said. “I didn’t want to go out and about because of COVID.” He had extra reason for concern. Two of his three adult sons contracted the virus and the annual family trip to their Centre County hunting camp had to be canceled. The uptick in hunters comes as their numbers have been declining. peaked in the U.S. in 1980 with nearly 17 million hunters. As older hunters died, interest waned and by 2016 license sales had dropped to 11.5 million. Pennsylvania has remained one of America’s top hunting states, ranking second behind Texas in numbers of deer hunters. But fewer blaze orange and camouflage jackets roaming the woodlands means less money for wildlife management. In Pennsylvania, no funding for wildlife management comes from state taxes. Manipulation and maintenance of wildlife populations, including nongame and endangered species, are funded through hunting license sales, a federal tax on firearms and ammunition and commercial leases on Game Commission properties. Concerned that wildlife management funding was drying up, commissioners and the state legislature concocted new hunting opportunities aimed at increasing hunter interest and recruiting new license buyers. In 2019 and 2020, some hunting seasons were lengthened and a few new seasons were added. But the greatest expansions of hunting opportunities were the Saturday rescheduling of the start of the firearm deer season in 2019 and this year’s addition of three days of Sunday hunting. The 20-year slide in hunting license sales skidded to a stop when 860,743 licenses were sold in 2019. Through November, hunters have purchased 861,404 licenses with more expected to be sold (the license year begins and ends in June). The Game Commission wants to know how much of the 2020 sales increases were scored through its rescheduling of hunting opportunities, and the extent of short-term growth resulting from the pandemic. “If you remember, last year before most of us had heard the word COVID-19, there was an increase in license sales in a year when most states saw declines,” said Mr. Lau. Game Commission analysts concluded last year’s increase was tied to the inaugural Saturday opening day. “So this year, there again was a Saturday opener followed by a day of Sunday hunting, which was among three first-ever regulated Sunday big-game hunting opportunities in state history,” he said. “So there was plenty to get hunters excited, and as I see it, that absolutely had to have an effect on license sales. That’s not to say COVID hasn’t played a part. But without diving deeper into people’s motivations for buying licenses, we don’t know more about it.”