Yesterday, Mark Latti from the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, issued a press release claiming that Maine’s trend in the sale of hunting and fishing licenses was bucking the nationwide trend. According to Latti, the number of fishing licenses sold in Maine last year increased while hunting licenses held pretty much steady.

1n 1996, there were there were 267,158 licensed anglers in Maine. In 2006, that number grew to 279,262, an increase of nearly 5%. In 1996, Maine had 210,183 licensed hunters, and in 2006, that number was 209,165, a decrease of one half of one percent. Over that time, the sale of hunting and fishing licenses across the nation dropped 15%.

To be fair, what these numbers tell us are similar to the numbers being used from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Survey(pdf file), with one major difference. First of all these numbers from MDIFW show license sales for 1996 and for 2006. Not included here are sales for all the years in between including data that would determine how many previous license holders no longer buy a license and how many new hunters do or who skipped a year or two. The survey by USFWS does not necessarily include licensed participants.

What is difficult to assess here is whether we are comparing apples with apples or bananas with apricots. I just don’t know and to be honest, I’m not sure anyone does.

When the final report from the USFWS comes out in November, hopefully we can do some better comparisons to see how information the state of Maine has and that collected by the U.S. Census Bureau differs or agrees. The preliminary report gives overviews by region, in this case New England. That same overview states that there were no regions that saw an increase in fishing participation.

Nationally there was a 12% decline in anglers from 2001 to 2006. This decline is statistically significant at the 5% level.2 At the regional level the number of anglers decreased in all Regions.

Of course without having information from all the other New England states, we cannot determine the accuracy of that statement. The good news is, Maine uses license sales, along with other information, to determine trends statewide in hunting and fishing participation. Maine’s trend looks encouraging.

What we don’t seem to have a handle on is participation nationwide of hunters and fishermen under the age of 16. Those trends would better tell us about the future of the sport, I would think. Many programs are being put into place to recruit new and younger sportsmen.

Tom Remington

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