Martha Rial, Post-Gazette The number of licensed deer hunters in Pennsylvania has continued to decline since hitting a high of about 1.3 million in the early 1980s. Click photo for larger image. Online graphic See a graphic that shows where the most deer hunting licenses are sold in the U.S.

Hours after stepping into a friend's fields for the first, chilly day of Pennsylvania's annual deer hunt, Stan Moore bagged his prize, a stately buck with a seven-point rack.

Tickled as he was, Mr. Moore was rueful that his state license barred him getting another one.

One day later, he suited up again in Sunkist-orange gear and sturdy boots to walk the woods of western Washington County as an onlooker and to savor the experiences of his hunter friends while he could. The two-week statewide rifle season began Nov. 28 and ended yesterday.

"I've been hunting since I was 16. I buy my license every year," said Mr. Moore, 41, of West Alexander, as gunfire echoed through the hills behind him near the Pennsylvania-West Virginia line.

"There are some rules [in Pennsylvania] that I disagree with, but what am I going to do? I was brought up on it. I love it."

Those are the sentiments that hearten officials with the State Game Commission, sporting organizations and hunting clubs as they strive to reverse years of gradual decline in hunting license sales and spur interest in a new generation of hunters.

"[A decline in license sales] is a bad thing for everyone in Pennsylvania," said Michael Duda, executive director of Responsive Management, a Virginia-based public opinion and survey research firm which specializes in natural resource and outdoor recreation issues.

"Pennsylvania residents care deeply about wildlife, whether they hunt or not," Mr. Duda said. "Anybody who cares about wildlife and wild areas should care about this, because hunters pay for wildlife conservation with license [and other] fees."

Pennsylvania had more deer hunters than any other state in 2001, the most recent year that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service published its national report, "Deer Hunting in the United States: An Analysis of Hunter Demographics and Behavior." Nine percent of Pennsylvanians hunted, which made this the state with the largest percentage of hunters.

The report, which is published every five years, said Pennsylvania was home to about 1 million of the nation's 13 million hunters, including 932,000 deer hunters.

But despite a hunting tradition that dates to its earliest days, Pennsylvania's overall sales of general hunting licenses have steadily dropped over the past two decades since their peak of slightly more than 1.31 million in 1981 and 1982.

Since then, license sales have slipped nearly every year, hovering slightly below 1.1 million over the past 10 years and continuing to dwindle. License sales have fallen by 75,000, or about 7.3 percent, since 1995. Last year they totaled 1.01 million, according to Game Commission statistics.

That is bad news for the commission, which draws more than 60 percent of its revenue from hunters. And while commission officials don't track the amount of time hunters devote to the sport, they believe licensees don't head to the woods as often as their forebears did.

"I don't think there's much question that hunters are less engaged," said Mel Schake, a supervisor with the commission's southwest region. "I've seen a significant difference in how hard people used to hunt, or how much time they put into it now."

Pennsylvania's experience parallels a national trend, according to a Responsive Management study which showed licenses reaching a peak of about 16.75 million in 1982 and falling to about 14.75 million in 2003 and 2004.

The state's hunting proponents, however, draw comfort in noting that sales of comparable licenses have dropped more precipitously around the nation, particularly in New England, Florida and West Coast states, than here.

"When you take [the national picture] in the long term, there is concern," commission spokesman Jerry Feaser said. "In some cases, we're dwindling at a lower rate. Some states are really hemorrhaging."

They also point to an exception which gives them hope: Sales of junior licenses, which for decades also had been shrinking, have begun to buck that trend.

Driven by special teen-only seasons, education programs and a combination license aimed at enticing teen hunters, sales of junior licenses rose from 98,203 in 1999 to 106,162 last year. Sales of nonresident junior and nonresident junior combination licenses good for many types of game have held steady, with about 3,200 to 3,400 sold in recent years.

"Still, we're not recruiting younger hunters at same rate as we are losing adult hunters," said Mr. Schake, who's been with the commission for 24 years. "If we don't figure how to stop losing at one end but not picking up on the other, the long-term prospects don't look all that great."

Although Pennsylvania's rifle season for deer ended yesterday and archery season ran from Oct. 1 to Nov. 12, commission officials said they wouldn't have totals for 2005 license sales until the end of the muzzle-loader season and a second archery season, which run from Dec. 26 to Jan. 14.

Additional hunting of antlerless deer is permitted through January in certain urban and suburban areas defined by the Game Commission in southwestern and southeastern Pennsylvania.

Antlerless licenses for nearly all of those areas had been sold as of Friday, but about 8,600 still were available for the area that includes Allegheny and parts of Washington, Westmoreland, Beaver and Butler counties. An additional 1,500 licenses were available in southeastern Pennsylvania.

Some hunters and hunting proponents blame falling license sales on changing public attitudes and increased development which has swallowed farms and woodlots, forcing them to drive considerable distances from their homes before shouldering their weapons.

"As a kid, I'd come home from school and could literally walk across the road to hunt," said John Englert, 48, of Elizabeth Township, who's hunted for 36 years. "A lot of guys are stopping because of a lack of places to hunt."

Unlike 39 other states, Pennsylvania doesn't allow hunting on Sundays, although the Governor's Advisory Council for Hunting, Fishing and Conservation and some legislators are pushing to change that.

"Nowadays, you don't know where your kids are on Saturdays, or you're running to a soccer game. I lost my son for about six years to a little red sports car and blond girls," said William J. Klein, 51, an officer of the Roscoe Sportsmen's Association in Washington County and a supervisor for the Ruffed Grouse Society, a national conservation organization.

"They hit 17, 18, they'd rather go to a football game than go out hunting," said Mr. Klein, the father of Pete, 26. "We lose them for a while, but, hopefully, they come back."

Some hunters gripe that restrictions on the number of deer, one per license, and the minimum number of antlers on a buck they may legally bag have driven former hunters from the sport or to states without restrictions.

And while the roads and suburbs of southwestern Pennsylvania might seem overrun with deer, hunters in north-central Pennsylvania, where hungry deer have stripped habitats of food, now complain that their region harbors too few.

Mr. Moore, who traditionally gets an antlerless license along with his general license, said he recognized that antler restrictions, set to prevent hunters from killing too many immature bucks and skewing the herd population, might be resulting in bigger, more mature bucks. But he cited the carcasses of three antlered bucks on nearby Interstate 70 as evidence that southwestern Pennsylvania remains amply populated.

"I would like to see Pennsylvania do something with [its license] to allow us to get more deer," he said. "We live off the deer."

Other hunters complain about a newly enforced regulation which requires them to provide their Social Security number when buying a hunting license, saying they fear identity theft by clerks who see the number.

Game Commission officials said they planned no immediate changes in antler restrictions or their overall deer-management program, which aims to develop a healthy herd, ensure habitats with adequate food for deer and other wildlife and reduce conflicts when humans and deer encroach upon each other.

Commission officials began enforcing the Social Security number regulation after the state Department of Public Welfare notified them in March that it was required under laws intended to track child-support scofflaws.

The commission is continuing to work with sportsmen's clubs and other organizations to develop and expand programs for young hunters. Along with other outdoors organizations, it supports a mentored hunting program which would allow children under 12, the current minimum license age, to hunt within arm's length of an adult who meets commission requirements and believes the child is ready.

It plans to continue special youth hunts and seasons for deer and other animals, exempt young hunters from antler restrictions and hold field days with sportsmen's clubs to teach hunting and safety procedures. It hopes to revitalize an outdoors program aimed at women but put on hold because of funding problems.

Those initiatives, and the state's recent increase in youth licenses, are attracting attention from other states, Mr. Duda said.

"In a lot of ways, Pennsylvania is confronting the issue. Things could be real bad," he said. "Agencies are starting, like the Pennsylvania Game Commission already has done, to say 'Wow. We need to do something.' I think we're at a neat stage where things are going to start turning around."