It is my opinion they are just holding out till they can get their funding from the General Fund, then they can forget about the pain in the butt hunters. They refuse to require a license for bikers, hikers and others who use the game lands using the excuse these people will want a say in the land management. If they have to buy a hunting license to ride their bike on the game land how does that give them a say? Now if they issue a bike permit then I see the point.
This is almost correct. It is laughable for the Pa. Game Commission to say that they would have to give bikers, hikers, and horse riders a say in game lands management if they charged them a license fee for using State Game Lands.
Why would anyone think they would give those users a say when they don't give the hunters who they are supposed to serve a say. The Pa. Game Commission answers to no one but the Governor, who frequently is an anti-gun and anti-hunting Democrat. When hunters and The Unified Sportsmen of Pa. tried to sue them over their disastrous deer management issue, they were able to convince a judge that the hunters who paid the bills "had no legal standing to sue them." Now they get tons of money from logging, mineral extraction, and enormous revenues from the Marcellus Shale gas and oil fracking royalties and leases. In spite of all that, they still find creative ways to add more and more special licenses and license fee increases as game numbers and hunting opportunities decrease.
The only thing that got them to reverse a bit of their program to exterminate the deer was a great number of death threats which caused Deer Management Biologist Dr. Gary Alt to flee the state and go into seclusion.
