DNR survey

[Limpy88]

The interesting thing is, alone, hunting licenses are more than fishing as a whole.

3 k for a life time hunting, but you can add 5k to the bill, and get fishing to?

With different prices being quoted from the site they are probably Trying to gauge the price. The bwframe was $1200 less over all.
And the lifetime hunting in my page wasnt everything. I think just deer. I dont remember turkey in the just hunting license.

 

[SheepDog4Life]

I cant answer that. I can tell you it cost 1100 in 97/98.

So its basically tripled in 25 years.

25 years ago, land was under 1/3rd what it is now.

Gas/Fuel was under 1/3rd what it is now.

A new car was under 1/3rd what it is now.

etc

Ok, maybe $750 was what I told my then wife, now ex, lol!

Although I did pay for it by saving my "allowance", we each had "mad" money.

 

[edwea]

If you read the survey carefully, you would have seen that the amounts are RANDOMLY generated. Yes, they are trying to find how much people would be willing to pay.

 

[42769vette]

If you read the survey carefully, you would have seen that the amounts are RANDOMLY generated. Yes, they are trying to find how much people would be willing to pay.

Gotya. I didn't see that

 

[42769vette]

Ok, maybe $750 was what I told my then wife, now ex, lol!

Although I did pay for it by saving my "allowance", we each had "mad" money.

I've actually never bought an adult license in Indiana. My first year out of youth hunting, I saved my money, and bought a lifetime. I'm sur that 1100 is what I paid, because I remember it being the first thing I ever spent 4 digits on. I was 1 proud kid.

Each year I bought 1 big thing bailing hay for the summer. I started at 10 (big kid) and for the first few years it was guns, then a 500 dollar ATV (get back and forth to farms with no license). The following year I was going to get a drivers license, so I bought a 750 dollar truck. My final year bailing all summer I bought a lifetime hunting license.

 

[Jaybird1980]

I've actually never bought an adult license in Indiana. My first year out of youth hunting, I saved my money, and bought a lifetime. I'm sur that 1100 is what I paid, because I remember it being the first thing I ever spent 4 digits on. I was 1 proud kid.

Each year I bought 1 big thing bailing hay for the summer. I started at 10 (big kid) and for the first few years it was guns, then a 500 dollar ATV (get back and forth to farms with no license). The following year I was going to get a drivers license, so I bought a 750 dollar truck. My final year bailing all summer I bought a lifetime hunting license.

That was the normal price, but they regularly offered them at $750. I know because I couldn't scrounge enough to get it. Don't remember the year, but it was definitely between 2000-03

 

[SheepDog4Life]

I've actually never bought an adult license in Indiana. My first year out of youth hunting, I saved my money, and bought a lifetime. I'm sur that 1100 is what I paid, because I remember it being the first thing I ever spent 4 digits on. I was 1 proud kid.

Each year I bought 1 big thing bailing hay for the summer. I started at 10 (big kid) and for the first few years it was guns, then a 500 dollar ATV (get back and forth to farms with no license). The following year I was going to get a drivers license, so I bought a 750 dollar truck. My final year bailing all summer I bought a lifetime hunting license.

That's awesome on multiple levels, especially keeping your priorities straight. From about 16 to 25, I had only one thing on my mind and it wasn't hunting and fishing, lol! Then I returned to my senses.

That was the normal price, but they regularly offered them at $750. I know because I couldn't scrounge enough to get it. Don't remember the year, but it was definitely between 2000-03

Ok then I just lucked into it at $750.

I had been buying non-resident licenses for 3-4 years to deer hunt here with family and friends, so when I moved back to Indiana in late 1997, I first got my DL, then immediately my lifetime hunting and fishing issued in early 1998. It was my Christmas present to myself, lol!

Had it been $1100, I would have just got the lifetime hunting, not the fishing part, which was more just a convenience at the time, as the combo was about that and emptied my "piggy bank".

 

[bwframe]

Random numbers. Seems as if the DNR is fishing for what they can get?

I'd likely always fish, but remember well calculating the price increases in deer hunting licenses 30 years ago and thinking that they were pricing casual meat hunters out of the game.

I can't imagine buying one of their "good deal"? deer bundles today, only to find life and luck and the deer just didn't work out for me. Even with the Bidenomics, burger is way cheaper then that at the grocery.

 

[Cavman]

Random numbers. Seems as if the DNR is fishing for what they can get?

I'd likely always fish, but remember well calculating the price increases in deer hunting licenses 30 years ago and thinking that they were pricing casual meat hunters out of the game.

I can't imagine buying one of their "good deal"? deer bundles today, only to find life and luck and the deer just didn't work out for me. Even with the Bidenomics, burger is way cheaper then that at the grocery.

Yea hunting for meat to offset the grocery bill doesn't work out anymore unless you are a land owner.

 

[bwframe]

Yea hunting for meat to offset the grocery bill doesn't work out anymore unless you are a land owner.

It does for me, only because I invested in that lifetime license 30 years ago. I likely would no longer hunt deer now had I not.

Sadly, my kids and grandkids, being raised to be frugal, will likely never be deer hunters. Maybe they'll get to eat venison harvested with the car bumper?

Take a kid hunting?

 

[Hawkeye7br]

I paid $525 for my lifetime hunting, don't recall the year. Fishing was another $225?
It was at the suggestion of a game warden checking my license and noticed the turkey and waterfowl stamps. And back before the one buck per year rule? I didn't plan to shoot 3 bucks per season, but it seemed a waste to buy an archery buck tag and if not successful, a gun buck tag and if not successful, then a ML buck tag.

 

[Willie]

Email from Joe Caudell (DNR Deer Biologist) on the survey..

'"There are no proposed fees for the lifetime licenses yet.

This is just part of an economic study on this topic. Each person in the survey will see a different, randomly selected prices within an upper and lower limit for each license type. So if you talk to your friends, you may have seen $984, whereas someone else may have seen $800, and another person might see $1001. For each price (or range of prices), we will have a percentage of people at each level who were willing to pay for that license at that price. Each license type (i.e., lifetime fishing, lifetime deer bundle, the all-inclusive comprehensive license, etc.,) has a different range based on how long someone is expected to use it as well (so a 28 year old would use and get a greater value from a comprehensive lifetime license more than a 50 year old who purchases a lifetime deer bundle). I will eventually publish the results of the survey, including the ranges and what % of people are willing to purchase at different prices, but I won’t have access to that until the survey is complete and I download all of the data.

Obviously at $10,000 (or any of the prices on the high end of the range), many people are going to reject that price….but if the price they saw was $3200 or $1800 (depending upon your age), more people would consider that as a possible purchase. But that entire range is necessary to understand purchasing behavior at the different rates.

Once we get the data back from this study, we will combine it with the information from a recent Purdue study and the Fish and Wildlife Director will propose a suggested price for each lifetime license price. Then, those will go the Director of DNR and the Natural Resources Commission for discussion and approval (or rejection). At that time they will also solicit public feedback on that proposed price.

So this is just an early step in this process.


And a bit more info:

The previous lifetime license was heavily discounted. That will not be the case if we bring them back. And we understand that will mean that not everyone will be able to afford them and many hunters will have to continue to purchase annual licenses. There will still be an economic benefit to a lifetime license, but the last time it was offered it was about the cost of 10-15 years of annual licenses. That was one of the reasons that DNR had to stop selling them – it was losing money on the sale of those licenses, which was impacting the ability to manage properties, conduct wildlife work, etc. So to bring them back, they will need to be more in line with the value of the license. The real benefit is that once you purchase it, you will no longer be subjected to rate hikes in the license prices due to inflation, and you have the convenience of having a license that is good from now on.


Cheers,

Joe"

 

[Willie]

BTW - I paid $325 for my LTL (hunting only) in December of 1987. IIRC - Deer tags was $5.25 then and was due to jump to $13.25 in 1988. Since the LTL price is based on the prices of licenses and tags the LTL was going to jump more than double. I think its paid for itself.....

 

[bwframe]

Email from Joe Caudell (DNR Deer Biologist) on the survey..

'"There are no proposed fees for the lifetime licenses yet.

This is just part of an economic study on this topic. Each person in the survey will see a different, randomly selected prices within an upper and lower limit for each license type. So if you talk to your friends, you may have seen $984, whereas someone else may have seen $800, and another person might see $1001. For each price (or range of prices), we will have a percentage of people at each level who were willing to pay for that license at that price. Each license type (i.e., lifetime fishing, lifetime deer bundle, the all-inclusive comprehensive license, etc.,) has a different range based on how long someone is expected to use it as well (so a 28 year old would use and get a greater value from a comprehensive lifetime license more than a 50 year old who purchases a lifetime deer bundle). I will eventually publish the results of the survey, including the ranges and what % of people are willing to purchase at different prices, but I won’t have access to that until the survey is complete and I download all of the data.

Obviously at $10,000 (or any of the prices on the high end of the range), many people are going to reject that price….but if the price they saw was $3200 or $1800 (depending upon your age), more people would consider that as a possible purchase. But that entire range is necessary to understand purchasing behavior at the different rates.

Once we get the data back from this study, we will combine it with the information from a recent Purdue study and the Fish and Wildlife Director will propose a suggested price for each lifetime license price. Then, those will go the Director of DNR and the Natural Resources Commission for discussion and approval (or rejection). At that time they will also solicit public feedback on that proposed price.

So this is just an early step in this process.


And a bit more info:

The previous lifetime license was heavily discounted. That will not be the case if we bring them back. And we understand that will mean that not everyone will be able to afford them and many hunters will have to continue to purchase annual licenses. There will still be an economic benefit to a lifetime license, but the last time it was offered it was about the cost of 10-15 years of annual licenses. That was one of the reasons that DNR had to stop selling them – it was losing money on the sale of those licenses, which was impacting the ability to manage properties, conduct wildlife work, etc. So to bring them back, they will need to be more in line with the value of the license. The real benefit is that once you purchase it, you will no longer be subjected to rate hikes in the license prices due to inflation, and you have the convenience of having a license that is good from now on.


Cheers,

Joe"

Interesting. Mine was nothing like that...

 

[singlestacksig]

You price is different. Mine was $8047.??

My wife said her fishing lifetime license was $1300 while mine was only $937

That is interesting they are putting different amounts. Wonder what makes it change?

it's a sampling method, everyone does not get the same questions.. and when sampling for a "sellable price" the price will change so they can say X % of people would buy at price A , X % at price B .. and so on..

 

[Jaybird1980]

Random numbers. Seems as if the DNR is fishing for what they can get?

I'd likely always fish, but remember well calculating the price increases in deer hunting licenses 30 years ago and thinking that they were pricing casual meat hunters out of the game.

I can't imagine buying one of their "good deal"? deer bundles today, only to find life and luck and the deer just didn't work out for me. Even with the Bidenomics, burger is way cheaper then that at the grocery.

Well that's just not true. You have to take into account quality.
You might be able to find really cheap burger somewhere, but it will be really cheap quality also, nowhere near as good ground venison.

Even if you just get one dear you can get 30-40 pounds of ground if you grind it. If you bought the bundle that comes to $3 pound or less.
If you manage to harvest more than 1 the price per pound keeps dropping from there.

If you're finding 95% or even 90% in a store for less than $3 pound that's pretty impressive, but that still doesn't take into account the knowing where your meat came from factor.

Yes getting skunked does suck, but it's not all that hard to harvest at least a doe.

 

[bwframe]

I wonder if the DNR's budget is posted somewhere? Shouldn't that be public information, along with salaries?

30ish years ago, I received the word via phone call from a friend expressing that licensing was taking a drastic increase, both annuals and lifetimes. That's when I scraped together the funds to get the lifetime, thinking I'd never hunt again at the new rates.

Even though there was no real Internet then, the coming increase back then was not a secret. Every outdoorsman I knew was aware. All the shops, on top of word of mouth knew what was coming and there were months to prepare for the massive license (tax) increases.

A couple years after me and a HUGE number of others bought the lifetime licenses, I had a family member that had worked for DNR at Yellowood for years. She expressed that the DNR were drunk with money and had trouble trying to spend it all, even after giving all of the DNR upper management life-changing big raises. Like most govt agencies, money not spent will be money not received in next year's budget. A few years after that, they axed the lifetime licenses, apparently no longer generating enough money to justify their bloated existence?

 

[kickbacked]

If you have a lifetime fishing license do you need to update and print out a piece of paper yearly? Or do you just use the same one until the ink disappears? I’m guessing it doesn’t include species needing stamps.

 

[freedomenthusiast100]

I love the option of a lifetime license. I was always envious of Florida having a lifetime fishing license. If that were an option here in Indianan I would exhaust my resources to purchase one. lol As was mentioned in the comments here; it will eventually pay for itself depending on where you are in life.

 

[bwframe]

If you have a lifetime fishing license do you need to update and print out a piece of paper yearly? Or do you just use the same one until the ink disappears? I’m guessing it doesn’t include species needing stamps.

Mine's old, but rock solid. It came in a heavy clear laminate.

Not that I'd trust it, but they have electronic record of you by name. CO's call in names all the time. I've seen it, heard it on the scanner and had it done for me, when my license was buried deeper than I could quickly find. IIRC, I found my license before the return came back on me? Maybe I need to have the CO "run me" next time to verify?


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