New license a tremendous value
Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed an odd bill into law Friday that creates a lifetime hunting and fishing license for children age 10 and younger.
The new lifetime license costs $500.
The Arkansas Game and Fish Commission has long offered a $1,000 lifetime sportsman’s license that conveys hunting and fishing privileges at no additional cost for the holder’s lifetime. It also covers the cost for a lifetime for all of the other stamps and permits you might need to hunt and fish recreationally in the Natural State, including the state waterfowl stamp, state trout stamp, leased lands permit, elk hunting permits, and controlled hunts on WMAs for deer and wild turkey.
The new license provides all of those things at half the price for young children. It seems weird because children under age 16 don’t need licenses to hunt and fish in Arkansas.
It’s actually a really creative idea.
The Game and Fish Commission doesn’t really sell many Lifetime Hunting and Fishing Licenses. If you buy it when you’re young, it pays for itself in a short time if you buy the licenses and permits you need to do all of the things you can do here. However, not many people are not willing or able to plunk down a grand on a license.
The new discounted lifetime license for children encourages parents to buy it for their kids with the hope that kids will hunt and fish for a lifetime. A new iPhone 14, in comparison, costs $799. An iPhone Plus costs $899. Both will be obsolete in a couple of years. A $500 lifetime license is a wise investment if its holder hunts and fishes for a lifetime.
Generational trends indicate declining participation in hunting and fishing. Many children never take up these sports even if one or more parents are avid hunters and anglers. They will never buy licenses, and they will never buy the hunting and fishing equipment that feeds the Federal Aid in Wildlife Restoration and the Federal Aid in Fisheries Restoration funds. Therefore, they they will never contribute additionally to fish and wildlife conservation in Arkansas beyond the 1/8th percent statewide conservation sales tax that funds the Game and Fish Commission, State Parks, and the Natural Heritage Commission.
The lower price is an incentive for parents to buy the new discounted lifetime license for their children. In this manner they will contribute additionally as proxies for their children, with the amounts amortized for 6-10 years. That calculation comes from the fact that the minimum age to hunt deer with a modern gun in Arkansas is 6. That is also the minimum age to participate in the state’s youth turkey hunting season. Most children younger than 6 are not strong enough or big enough to shoot shotguns, so they are physically unable to hunt ducks.
If a parent buys the license for an infant, that’s $500 for six years of non-participation in hunting.
Participation in fishing is more variable, but the calculations are roughly equal.
An influx of new license holders, if it occurs, will also entitle the Game and Fish Commission to more federal aid dollars. That’s because the Pittman-Robertson and Dingell-Johnson Funds are based partly on the number of licenses that a state sells.
It’s like the Game and Fish Commission taking out a loan from prospective customers that will not even need its products for 16 years. Again, a percentage of them will never need it because they will never hunt and fish, or they will never hunt and fish enough to buy $500 worth of licenses. In that light, the commission will make $500 from a person that would otherwise never bought a license.
On the other hand, having a lifetime license might incentivize people to take up hunting and fishing later in life that might not have otherwise because of the barrier of having to buy a license. Already having it might encourage them to try it. Many who try it will like it enough to continue.
Of course, they will still have to pass a hunter education course to legally hunt, but removing the licensing barrier does make it a little easier to start.