January 29, 2020

Maine Proposes Socialistic Subsidized Mandatory Comprehensive Hunting License

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Once upon a time, choice was a good thing. It symbolized independence, freedom, liberty. It was proof that one truly lived in mostly a free country. Those days are gone and an example of the direction this country has taken can be seen in the State of Maine where a bill has been proposed to offer a mandatory “comprehensive” hunting license. It works basically this way. Instead of buying a big game hunting license, with options available to enhance the hunting experience (by choice), totaling by some estimates $130 or so, the bill suggests increasing the cost of a “comprehensive” hunting license to obtain a revenue neutral situation and forcing all hunters to pay.

Once upon a time in Maine, a person could walk into their town office and buy a hunting license. With that license they could go hunting……period. This eventually morphed into a revenue-generating scheme in which hunters had to pay for separate licenses for big game, small game, deer permits, bear permits, turkey permits, muzzleloader permits, archery permits, etc. etc. etc.(Now totaling $130.00) This gradual tax scheme met with little resistance, or so it appeared, mostly due to the fact that the majority of hunters only hunted deer. They therefore needed only one deer hunting license. But the state figured out how to charge extra money for the privilege of shooting a deer without antlers.

We have now reached a point in our continued downward spiral toward complete socialism and the subsidization of anything and anyone, that all may be forced to purchase a one-size-fits-all hunting license, at a higher price of course. What once was choice would then become a state mandated tax, not unlike Obamacare, except this would only affect hunters. Because a handful of hunters buy all the tags and permits and think it’s too high, I must pay more money so they don’t have to. Does that make sense to you? And let’s not forget that the reason given is to make it simpler to buy a license…..really? You know you’re a socialist if……….?

V. Paul Reynolds writes:

For my money, give the sportsman a choice with an optional comprehensive, one-stop hunting license that sells for less than $100.00. The Department would not lose a lot of money, nobody is subsidizing anybody, and the benefit is more simplicity and convenience for both the license sellers and the customers.

As a friend and regular reader of this website once said, the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife spends lots of time and resources attempting to figure out how to make it easier and faster for customers to purchase their products, while neglecting the product itself.