Wish upon a “Star” tonight by John C. Street

It might be as much my fault as it is theirs.

After all, I’ve never even so much as sent them an email let alone made an appointment to sit down and talk with them.

True, given their numbers, it would take an awful lot of time and require a considerable amount of travel but the stakes are high enough that maybe I should put forth the effort.

Still, I assumed – or maybe this is just my rationalization - that if I had as much to lose as they do, I’d make a concerted effort to stay on top of stuff like this.

Collectively, “They” are one of the largest industries in Pennsylvania, an unaffiliated conglomerate that produces $1.7 billion in sales every year. “They” also employ 28,000 of our state’s citizens and “They” contribute $214 million tax dollars to the Keystone State’s treasury

(Author’s Note: These figures are excerpted from a report titled, “HUNTING AND FISHING: – Bright Stars of the American Economy”)

What then are Pennsylvania’s deer hunters to think when this $1.7 billion industry is absent from the fight to save our whitetail deer, arguably the one critter that adds more to their bottom line than all the others combined?

Is it because this author has been remiss in sending them an email or calling for an appointment?

Surely not.

Any industry that can accurately spot, procure and market the latest trends in all the myriad gadgets and gizmos being used by hunters is savvy enough to see that license sales have fallen by a third (from close to 1,200,000 down to about 800,000) in just the past few decades and that the rate of decline - in almost direct proportion to the state’s declining deer herd – has been accelerating since the start of the new deer (mis)management program.

So why hasn’t the outdoor media picked up on this story?

Their symbiotic relationship with this industry (advertising dollars pay their salaries) should have them jumping to their “Stars” defense. Surely there are a few investigative journalists left in the ranks of the Pennsylvania Outdoor Writers Association with the skill sets needed to get this story front page coverage.

How is it that none of them have jumped on this abomination with both feet, asked the tough questions and ballyhooed their findings to the high heavens?

And where are our State Senators and Representatives, you know the ones who - when they want us to vote for them - tell us they’ll work their tails off to bring jobs to Pennsylvania or, at the very least fight like Banshees to keep the ones we already have?

One of Pennsylvania’s biggest industries is being destroyed by a small handful of environmental ideologues and our politicos have tucked their tails between their legs and gone into hiding, hoping that the real Banshees, the environmental ideologues, will just leave them alone.

The release of the information that documents the “Mismanagement of Pennsylvania’s Deer Herd” (available at www.acslpa.org) has confirmed what many have long suspected; the Pennsylvania Game Commission has been infiltrated, and is now being managed, by a group of environmental ideologues whose eco-ethos are far different than the “Protect and Conserve” – constitutionally assigned - mission of their agency.

Now that the full scope of their mismanagement has come to light, isn’t it high time for these ideologues to be called to account?

But outdoor writers won’t do it.

Any danged fool writer who, as one editor described it, “goes off the deep end” by pointing out the ideological idiosyncrasies of environmental ideologues will find their contributions are no longer welcome.

And our elected representatives won’t do it.

The political winds aren’t blowing hard enough for them to hoist up their sail and tack against the incoming tide.

So that leaves us with the “Bright Stars of the American Economy,” the ones that – right here in Pennsylvania -  employ 28,000 people and contribute $214 million in tax dollars to the state treasury every year.

The “Stars” that, through their advertising dollars, keep the outdoor media in business.

The “Stars” that create and retain the jobs politicians like to take credit for.

And the “Stars” that, if the environmental ideologues get their way, have the most to lose.

You know, maybe I should send that email.

And I think I’ll start it with … “I wish I may, I wish I might ………”