Those who held lifetime licenses when regulation became effective no longer need permit.
Any Pennsylvania hunter who held a senior lifetime hunting or combination license prior to May 13, 2017 will not need to purchase a pheasant permit to hunt pheasants in the 2018-19 license year.
The pheasant permit was created last year as a way to help offset the costs of the Pennsylvania Game Commission’s pheasant propagation program. In its first year, the $26.90 permit was required for all adult and senior pheasant hunters, including senior lifetime license buyers.
The requirement for a permit officially became regulation on May 13, 2017.
And the Pennsylvania Board of Game Commissioners today voted to allow hunters who held senior lifetime hunting or combination licenses prior to May 13, 2017 to hunt pheasant without obtaining a permit.
Adult pheasant hunters still will need to purchase the permit; junior pheasant hunters will need a free permit in 2018-19.
The pheasant permit was one of several initiatives by the Game Commission to make the pheasant propagation program more cost-effective. The agency in recent years closed two of its four pheasant farms, and began purchasing day-old chicks from private propagators rather than carrying over breeding pheasants and raising chicks from eggs.
Through these measures the annual costs of the program have been reduced from about $4.7 million to about $2.3 million. Additionally, the pheasant permit in its first year generated more than $1.1 million to help offset those costs.
Commissioners said the reduced overall costs of the program have made it easier to grandfather-in those pheasant hunters who held senior lifetime licenses at the time the permit became official.
Nearly 43,000 hunters purchased a pheasant permit, and about 4,300 of them were senior lifetime license buyers.
Courtesy PA Game Commission www.pgc.pa.gov