Ohio's fishing-hunting license issuance continues to tumble during pandemic

Ohio’s to-date fishing license distribution is still lagging during the world-wide coronavirus epidemic.

However, the percentage drop in to-date spring wild turkey-hunting tag sales actually widen when placed alongside those figures made available last week.

In most of the following cases, the actual comparisons are for to-date 2020 verses their respective 2019 comparable statistics.

Based on data supplied by the Ohio Division of Wildlife through March 30th, Ohio had issued to-date 93,283 fishing licenses of all kinds. For the same period in 2019 that figure was 136,891 documents of all kinds. This comparison amounts to a roughly 32-percent year-to-year to-date decline. The percent year-to-year to-date decline as reported last week was 35 percent.

The number of to-date annual adult resident fishing license as of March 30th was 73,450 verses its 2019 counterpart of 118,329 percent, or a drop of 38 percent.

For the annual non-resident fishing license category, a 32 percent drop was seen between 2019 and 2020; with actual to-date numbers being 5,432 and 3,639.

To-date three-day tag sales were down also – 47 percent, in fact – from 803 such documents issued in 2019 to 430 this years as of March 30th.

Likewise, one-day fishing license sales were down, though not by nearly as much. Here, 1,546 such documents were issued to-date in 2019 and 1,333 to-date as of March 30. That drop was 16 percent.

Turkey tag license issuance is likewise demonstrating a decline in this season of the pandemic.

The March 30th to-date total of all types of turkey tags numbered 6,654 verses 8,265 tags issued for the like period in 2019. This was a 20 percent drop, slightly greater than the 18 percent seen in last week’s report.

Off significantly were the number and percentage of turkey tags sold to eligible senior citizens. The March 30th to-date tally stood at just 591 tags verses 1,186 tags issued for the same period last year. Thus, the Wildlife Division issued 50 percent fewer tags to-date this year when compared to the same period in 2019.

To-date non-resident spring wild turkey-hunting permits as of March 30th totaled 227 verses 330 for the same period in 2019. That is a 30-percent decline.

One of the few bright spots in the 22 types of fishing and hunting licenses issued by the Wildlife Division was the distribution of youth spring wild turkey-hunting permits. Here, the March 30th to-date number was up about three percent: To 457 such documents to-date this year verses its 2019 counterpart of 446 documents.

- Jeffrey L. Frischkorn
JFrischk@Ameritech.net
JFrischk4@gmail.com