Mainers Turn to Hunting During the Pandemic of 2020

According to the Bangor Daily News, Mainers were really taking advantage of the great Maine outdoors in 2020.

Many COVID-19 restrictions limited the kind of indoor activities we could do and how many people could be involved so, being outside was a way to curtail some of the dangers of transmitting the virus while still being able to exercise, eat out or do some recreational activities.

Our backyards provide an exceptional outdoors experience and, in a year where the outdoors seemed like a way safer option than hanging around a bunch of people indoors, Mainers took advantage of the opportunity and you can see it in the numbers.

This year more hunting licenses were issued than in 2020.  Also, ATV registrations were up as well.  Even though fewer fishing licenses and boat registrations were sold, it should be noted that these two items were bypassed in April to encourage people to move outdoors during the beginning months of the pandemic to avoid higher transmissible situations that happens indoors.

When it came to hunting, there were almost 10% more, or nearly 10,000 more, hunting licenses sold this year than in 2019, 130,781 licenses sold in 2020 versus 120,859 in 2019.

BDN is also reporting that the amount of deer tagged this year, 33,000, is an amount not seen since 2002.

It's interesting to find that a statewide survey of 'hunter-effort' reviewed by the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, found that hunting numbers could have been higher if the pandemic affected everybody the same way.  Nearly 8% of those who were surveyed said that they decided to go hunting because of the pandemic due to having to change plans.  5% of those surveyed stated that they had planned on going hunting but decided to change their plans because of the pandemic.  In the end, more people ended up going hunting anyway.