[[{“value”:”
Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to follow and signup for notifications!
Across the country, hunters and anglers are staring down double-digit hunting license fee increases while agency leadership quietly inflates its own salaries at a rate that dwarfs the nation’s median wage growth.
Hunting License Fee Increases by State
Recent findings show conservation agency directors taking five-figure salary increases across seven years – all the while running deficits and staffing shortages. Bloat the top and the bottom is starved. In many instances, open officer positions will remain unfilled due to “lack of resources.” Instead of tightening their belts, agencies are plugging their budget roles by forcing hunters and anglers to pay more for the same privileges.
Nearly one in five states has proposed or enacted hunting license fee increases – some reaching 30% or more – in only the past few years.
State
Fee Hike Increase %
Status
Washington
38% across most licenses
Implemented 2023. Additional Increase in 2025
Maryland
Hunting +42.9% (res), +23.1% (nonres); fishing +~56% nontidal
Implemented 2023. Additional increase in 2025
Oregon
~12–14% (2026) + 6–8% (2028, 2030) => ~27–30% total
Implemented (phased through 2030)
Nebraska
14%
Implemented 2024. Additional increase in 2026
Wisconsin
Resident Small Game: $16>$36
Resident Deer Tag: $22>$42
Non Resident Archer: $165>$200
Proposed, then blocked (2025)
Ohio
$74>$210 Non Resident Deer Permit
Awaiting approvals
Michigan
Proposed ~+33–34% on combos
Proposed. Not implemented
A Michigan resident put it plainly:
“DNR should CUT vacation budget before pushing fee increases. DNR Director, governor recently left for a taxpayer-funded trip to the United Kingdom and Ireland.”
Meanwhile, the median American worker sees only 3-4% annual wage growth–and that’s if they’re lucky. Agencies will insist that inflation and rising operational costs justify these hikes. Prove it.
Inflation over the last decade? 3% on average.
Salary hikes for top conservation brass? Some exceed 50%
StateRole/Position201020112012201320142015201620172018201920202021202220232024
WisconsinDirector of Natural Resources$125,000$125,000$126,251$127,514$127,026$127,026$127,026$147,000$149,947$152,755$152,755$155,813
OregonODFW Director$136,320$142,464$145,308$148,572$222,804
TennesseeTWRA Executive Director$168,708$168,708$168,708$168,708$168,708$150,324$181,968$178,968$214,416$243,776
UtahUtah Director of Natural Resources$126,214$129,247$130,042$132,974$132,974$140,004$140,004$158,870$158,870$163,634$241,508
MarylandMaryland DNR Secretary$148,778$148,778$148,778$148,778$148,778$148,778$159,312$159,312$159,312$159,312$159,312$166,427$171,454$215,000
MissouriMissouri Director of Natural Resources$120,000$120,000$120,500$121,705$121,705$124,139$124,139$124,139$129,142$129,142$138,970$160,821
MichiganMichigan DNR Director$145,000$145,000$150,000$148,500$155,000$165,000$165,000$170,000$173,400$178,637$189,444
WashingtonWDFW Director$136,700$152,700$155,600$183,124$170,800$169,100$176,000$188,800$205,000$211,100
NebraskaNebraska Director of Natural Resources$113,882$116,444$117,772$145,003$148,483$149,968$151,919$151,919$170,000$173,401$220,002
OhioOhio Division of Wildlife Chief$127,400$127,400$127,400$127,400$137,113$137,113$144,061$169,998$174,678$172,723$179,629$185,016
(Source: Opengovpay, ballotpedia, Govsalaries, Openpayrolls, https://salaries.flatwaterfreepress.org/)
If budgets are truly strained, start by cutting administrative bloat–not squeezing the people who actually fund conservation. Either reduce the bloated salaries, or stop pretending this is an “inflation problem” while padding paychecks at the expense of the hunters.
The Consequences: Few Hunters, Less Conservation Funding
Participation will fall–and every agency should know it.
A 2024 study of how price sensitive outdoorsmen are makes it clear hunters love the pastime. But they can only pay for licenses up to a certain point.
The table below shows what recent license price hikes are in certain states followed by the drop in hunters that comes along with the hike, according to that study. It doesn’t paint a pretty picture for the future of conservation in our country.
State
License Hike
Resident Drop Projection
# of participants Projection
Washington
38%
6.7%
~33,500
Maryland
42.9%
7-8%
~11,000–12,000
Oregon
30.4% phased to 2030
~5% cumulative by 2030
~13,000–14,000
Nebraska
14%
2.5%
~7,000–7,500 resident hunters
Wisconsin
21.2%
1.4%
~1,200–1,300 nonresident hunters
Ohio
55%
~3.6%
~2,500–2,800 nonresident hunters
One Missouri resident summed up a growing national sentiment:
“They should change their name to the ‘Missouri Department of Wildlife Eradication.’ I used to respect our conservation department… but I sincerely believe they’ve lost their calling.”
The people who are actually managing wildlife aren’t the ones being paid – the people who are managing spreadsheets are.
In one case, the Tennessee Wildlife Resource Agency proposed a fee hike to help pay for salary increases. In the state, the director’s salary rose $60k+ in just 2 years! The fee hike proposal has since been scrapped.
On average, Wildlife techs are making $15–22/hour. Biologists are being paid between $40–60k.Field officers are stretched so thin with resources highly concentrated and allocated towards leadership salaries, many agencies are keeping open positions unfilled.
Bureaucratic Bloat: Greasy Handshakes Shakedown Conservation
When hunters and anglers open their wallets to buy a license, they assume the money flows into conservation, habitat, or wildlife management. What they don’t realize is that among the drivers of these fee hikes aren’t deer populations, habitat declines, or rising diesel costs — they’re the people sitting at the top of these agencies.
And not a single one of them was ever voted into power.
In every state pushing double-digit license increases — Washington, Maryland, Oregon, Nebraska, Wisconsin, Ohio — the story is the same. Directors and secretaries are not elected. They’re appointed by governors or by commissions who are also appointed. It’s a closed loop: bureaucrats selecting bureaucrats, insulated from the voters who actually fund the system.
No Downward Accountability
These directors don’t answer to hunters or anglers. They answer upward — to political appointees, administrative boards, and governors’ offices. Downward accountability? Zero. If they mismanage budgets, shrink public access, or lose tens of thousands of participants through higher fees, there is no mechanism for the public to remove them.
A decline in hunter participation that would get a CEO fired earns a wildlife director a new title, a new deputy, and a fresh 5-figure salary bump.
Institutional Nepotism Inside Wildlife Agencies
The hiring pipeline makes it worse. Many directors are promoted from inside the very agencies they later oversee — climbing the ladder from biologist to supervisor to administrator to deputy director, until they eventually become the ones signing off on the fee hikes. It’s not meritocracy. It’s a bureaucratic lineage. Institutional nepotism — not familial, but structural.
They protect each other.
- They justify each other’s salary bumps.
- They expand each other’s departments.
- They reward longevity, not performance.
And because they never face voters, they never face consequences.
Why Unelected Officials Drive Hunting License Fee Increases
Even the salary-setting process is circular. Who recommends the pay ranges for agency directors? Usually the agency itself, or a commission staffed by former agency insiders. Who approves the raises? The same network of unelected appointees. Who pays for those raises? Hunters and anglers.
It is the perfect bureaucratic ecosystem: insulated from the public, incentivized to grow itself, buffered from accountability, and free to raise fees whenever balance sheets get tight from administrative bloat.
When inflation is 3% but directors boost their pay 40%, 60%, even 90%, you start to understand the real driver of these “budget shortfalls.” When an agency spends freely on new administrative roles, expanded communications teams, luxury conferences, travel junkets, and deputy titles that didn’t exist five years ago, it becomes clear why they “need” more money.
And instead of trimming fat at the top, they go after the people who can’t vote them out.
Hunters. Anglers. Taxpayers. The very people who built the conservation model.
These fee hikes aren’t born out of necessity — they’re born out of a system where the decision-makers are accountable only to each other. Until the people paying the bills have a say in who runs these agencies, the cycle will continue: pay hikes for them, hunting license fee increases for us.
“}]]
