This time of year, a lot of Wyomingites start tilting a little bit when we sit. It’s not a medical condition, or a physical or mental imbalance. It’s because the billfold in our back pocket has started gaining weight. It’s not the sort of mass made of folding money, though. And for most of us, the thicker our wallets get, the less money we have.
That’s because we spend all our hard-earned money on hunting and fishing licenses. It starts slowly, way back in January. We start out with a fishing license, if we’re ice fishermen, and a bird and small game license. Those stay with us all year long. Depending on how we deal with our duck stamps, though, some of us wind up carrying last year’s bird license half the new year, because we’ve stuck the stamp to it. And that license might have a pheasant management stamp on it, too.
But we can get rid of those old licenses and stamps in July, when we get the new stamps. But that doesn’t really save us much thickness, because then we start acquiring turkey licenses, maybe a furbearer’s permit, and probably a bear or mountain lion license.
But then it really starts adding up. We can get three antelope licenses, three deer tags, and a pair of elk permits. Those of us who hunt the archery seasons have to get an archery permit, too. That’s about a sheaf of paper, and it all has to stay with us, usually in one of our back pockets. You don’t want to leave the house for a hunt and forget to take those licenses with you, so they go with you everywhere you go.
But there is a cure for fat wallet syndrome, and this is the time of year when you can take advantage of it. You can start whittling away at the stack by filling your big game tags.
Here’s hoping your fat wallet is much slimmer by Halloween.
