P&Y Entries - Resident/Non-Resident breakdown

[November Sunrise]

On another thread Sib posed this question:

"What percentage of book bucks are nonresident tags vs resident tags. This info would help establish a truer picture of the hunting values in each state. My thoughts are, and it seems to be supported by those going out of state, the average Michigan hunter going out of state would not take a 6 pt, or a small eight, afterall the reason for going is to get a trophy. So we can pretty much assume the values of those visiting the destination states. Now let's exclude them from the trophy books, this will give us a macro look at the values of the resident hunters. It would be interesting to see if any of this data is available, because I would like to see the prevailing local mentality of deer hunting. I guess what I'm asking is how much do out of state trophy hunters distort the book buck data? Perhaps not at all, perhaps it does distort the perceived hunting culture?

I'm not sure if any of the info I'd like to see is available, but imo, it would help me understand those states and their hunters better. Even if those stats are available, I still concede that it will still probably show the top states towards the tops and the lower states towards the bottom, but I wonder if it would rearrange those tops state a bit and the bottom one's might change positions. Like I said, I don't think it will drastically put any given state up or down the list, but without knowing it's hard to say."

[November Sunrise]

Sib,

I think this is a great question. I just called Pope & Young headquarters and spoke with a gentleman named Glenn. He stated that their organization doesn't note a hunters state of residence when a buck is entered, so the information doesn't exist in their records. He did state that their most recently published book has entries through January 1, 2005, and the book includes a CD that has all of the information in an Access database, which would permit someone who's adept with Access to create some interesting analysis.

Here's a few thoughts:

Until 2005 Illinois capped their number of non-resident archery tags at somewhere around 12,000. According to ESPN Outdoors they had a total of 110,000 licensed bowhunters in 2004 - thus the percentage of non-residents permitted to hunt was around 10%

According to ESPN outdoors Iowa was projecting approximately 59,000 bowhunters for this past season. I haven't yet been able to find what the non-resident bowhunting quota was, but if I remember correctly the number is well under 10,000.

For other top states that offer over the counter licenses such as WI or Ohio I haven't yet been able to find any info, but I'd be surprised if they have non-resident percentages above 7-8%.

Presumably the percentage of non-resident licenses would be somewhat equivalent to the percentage of P&Y entries that are from non-residents, but maybe that wouldn't be a safe assumption.

[Sib]

Thanks for following up and getting a hold of P&Y, November Sunrise (like your new handle, btw). I think having some of that info would help me understand the residents in each state a bit better and see if those records support a different mentality of hunters in those states. Most I talk to say there is a different mentality, but I'm somewhat reluctant to accept 2nd hand info even if the messenger has given me no reason to doubt them. I guess I like to form my opinion on data, rather than word of mouth, but with the limit on nonresident tags it's seems to pretty strong anecdotical evidence that hunters in the highly rated states do keep a higher standard. Thanks again for the follow up.