With end of season, it’s time to check your licenses

The turning of a calendar page last week marked an ending for many Ohioans with a liking for the hunt.

The 2022-23 rabbit season concluded Tuesday statewide, as did the trapping seasons for beavers, otters, minks and muskrats in central Ohio and surrounding counties.

While licensed hunters can have their way year-round with groundhogs and coyotes, most aren’t especially inclined to do so. The next much-anticipated engagement for many with guns involves rendezvousing with wild turkeys starting toward the end of April.

In a previous but not distant era, March 1 marked the start of the license year, meaning that hunters and fishers who wanted to remain legal needed to buy an updated one-year license.

That still holds true for annual adult resident hunting licenses, which cost $19 and remain valid through the last day of February. An annual resident fishing license, valid for one year from the day it is bought, runs $25 and for continued legal angling must be purchased before the expiration date of the current license.

Resident license costs vary by age of purchaser and by duration of purchase, which ranges to multiple years and even stretches to a lifetime. Check out the sundry choices at wildohio.gov.

A phone app, Huntfish Oh, is available through the site for free downloading. The app provides easy access to licenses, permits and a wide mix of stuff useful to outdoors types of all variations.

Tax sharing

Purchasers of fishing and hunting licenses pay indirectly or directly most of the cost of funding the Ohio Division of Wildlife and its mission of helping conserve the state’s wildlife as well as the natural habitat that many species require.

Citizens who neither hunt nor fish can assist ongoing conservation efforts by donating some or all of their state tax refund, said Mary Mertz, director of the Ohio Department of Natural Resources.

Tax donations to the Wildlife Diversity Fund have been used for projects involving lake sturgeon, freshwater mussels, hellbenders, trumpeter swans and monarch butterflies. Donations also pay for free informational field guides and posters.

Donations to the Division of Natural Areas as Preserves helps protect habitats within Ohio’s 142 state nature preserves and 15 state scenic rivers. Money goes to support critical ecological management of sometimes unique habitats, including efforts to remove invasive species.

Fishing lottery

Moderate temperatures in February triggered considerable steelhead fishing activity in northern Ohio rivers and creeks from the Vermilion River east. Depending on water temperatures and angler tolerance for lingering bonechilling conditions, steelhead action can be substantial well into April.

Anglers who prefer to walk on the mild side when in or around water can take a chance on the wildlife division’s annual lottery to gain access to a halfmile stretch of Cold Creek inside the Castalia Fish Hatchery in Erie County near Sandusky.

Castalia is where the division raises the young rainbow trout that are released and end up swimming as steelhead in winter-chilled Lake Erie tributaries.