From my News Journal column on August 2, 2012.
For years hunters picked up black-and-white paper copies of the annual Delaware Hunting & Trapping Guide when they purchased their hunting licenses.
The guides, typically issued in mid-July, signified the arrival of the new hunting year and listed individual hunting seasons and harvest limits, license requirements and basic regulations.
While functional, the old guides were rather bland and unappealing, and often seemed to end up buried in stacks of junk mail, cast aside with other infrequently used equipment. In some cases, hunters never even cracked the cover of the old guides and subsequently made no effort to consider the information presented in them.
But beginning with the 2011-2012 Delaware Hunting & Trapping Guide, the DNREC Division of Fish and Wildlife is now producing a glossy, full-color, magazine-style version of the annual guide that is much more appealing to Delaware hunters.
The new version of the guide still includes regulatory information, season definitions and license requirements, but it includes other content that informs, educates and entertains readers.
The 2012-2013 guide, for example, includes articles about Delaware whitetail deer habitat use and Delaware wild turkey research. It also includes colorful, easy-to-read and informative charts that depict Delaware deer harvest numbers and the use of hunting and trapping license dollars.
“We tried out the new full-color format last year with our special edition for the 100th anniversary of fish and wildlife conservation in Delaware, and it was very popular,” said Wildlife Section Administrator Greg Moore. “We plan to continue using the magazine style and to include hunting and wildlife-related articles that we think the public will enjoy.”
Another interesting and appealing addition to this year’s guide is the use of a photo of a Delaware outdoorsman on the cover. Last year the Division of Fish and Wildlife sponsored a hunting photo contest to pick the cover subject.
This year’s cover features 5-year-old Tom Burke Jr. of Greenwood preparing for a waterfowl hunt. The cover photo of a smiling young hunter standing in the water with his hand on a goose decoy, combined with the neat cover layout, may lead more hunters to utilize the publication.
With increased appeal comes increased costs, however. But according to Ken Reynolds, Division of Fish and Wildlife wildlife program manager and guide publication coordinator, advertisements in the guide covered production costs, saving money and allowing the division’s license fund to be used for other projects.