Danielle McEnany used to have a negative opinion of fishing. She was a surfer while growing up on the West Coast, and fishermen’s hooks used to catch in her wetsuit.
“It was a real nuisance, so I never thought fishing would be on my radar,” she said.
During the pandemic, that changed. “Fast-forward to this past summer, we probably went out fishing three to four times a week,” McEnany said. “It replaces a lot of what we’d normally do.”
She and her family live in Sheldon, and this summer they found themselves with rod and reel in hand on Lake Champlain.
“Instead of dinner dates with hubby, we’d rent out pontoon boats and fish on Lake Champlain for hours,” she said. “Normally we’d do trips to Montreal and Massachsusetts, and instead we did a fishing charter. It’s become an obsession.”
The McEnanys are far from alone. In 2020, thousands more Vermonters fished and hunted than at any time in the past 30 years. About 87,000 Vermonters bought fishing licenses this year, about 16,000 more than the 71,000 in 2019. As the pandemic limited travel, nonresident fishing license sales dipped to about 37,000, down from 43,000 in 2019.
For hunting, the trends were the same. Vermonters bought 141,00 hunting licenses in 2020, up significantly from the 120,000 sold in 2019. And, unlike with fishing, nonresident hunting licenses also rose, from 12,000 in 2019 to 15,000 in 2020.
The pandemic spurred more people to get outdoors, said Louis Porter, commissioner of the Vermont Department of Fish and Wildlife. Many Vermonters felt cooped up inside their houses, many were out of work or underemployed, and they saw a new outdoor hobby as the perfect solution.
“Uncertainty and difficult times were leading people to think about what they really wanted to spend their time doing this year,” Porter said. “Being with family in nature, doing things that are safe during a pandemic, like hunting and fishing, fit that extremely well.”
Shawn Good, fisheries biologist for the Fish and Wildlife Department, said in the beginning of the pandemic, people were confused about whether fishing would even be allowed. He said the governor’s first stay-home order did allow people to go outside for exercise, but that didn’t seem to include fishing. The rule was quickly broadened.
This year’s fishing license sales are the highest in more than 30 years, Good said.
Porter said people with second homes who came to live in Vermont during the pandemic aren’t eligible to buy resident hunting licenses, but were still hunting in droves this year. That’s one reason nonresident hunting numbers increased, despite travel restrictions.
While more people were hunting, some hunting traditions were blocked by requirements for social distancing.
“I’ve spoken to many people who aren’t going to their camps because of Covid, or they’re splitting time at camp among families,” Porter said. “We advised that if you’re going out with a hunting partner not in your household, not to share a vehicle, that kind of thing.”
Porter said he’s not worried that the new popularity of hunting and fishing will affect animal populations. The department evaluates harvest numbers every year and adjusts license numbers accordingly, so there shouldn’t be much of a difference in the long term, he said.
“Plus, many of the folks hunting this year are new to the activity. It’s something that you need to learn before you become skillful at it, so even though license numbers are up, our harvest numbers might not show a dramatic change,” Porter said.
This year also had a major spike in sales of guns and ammunition. Porter attributes that increase more to social and political unrest than the interest in hunting.
“Certainly firearms are something that people use for hunting. I think the interest in hunting contributed to those gun sales, but I think a lot of that is recreational shooting as well,” Porter said.
The influx of anglers has led the department to reconsider how to sustain interest in fishing, Good said.
“Obviously there was some seed of interest there prior to Covid having hit, but for some reason they never bought a license prior to this year,” Good said. “Is it that they’re just too busy, or is there something we can do to help people gain that interest and confidence to become successful?”
He said there are many reasons the state would like more people to hunt and fish, and one of them is that sales of hunting and fishing licenses help to support Vermont Fish and Wildlife programs. Now, the department would like to figure out how to sustain interest after the pandemic is over.
“Vermont is still a relatively underutilized fisheries resource,” Good said. “We’re actually trying to increase harvest. Fish are a good source of local and sustainable protein, it’s healthy, and we feel Vermont could sustain higher levels of harvest and not have any measurable negative impact.”
