RUMFORD – Of 17 bills proposed by the Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine, one would give up to $5 million in income tax credits to investors who pay for improvements in projects that serve the recreational fishing economy.

Another would change the firearms season for deer, giving northern Maine hunters first dibs, while one bill would let new hunters hunt through an apprenticeship with another hunter and forgo taking a hunter safety course until the following year.

“It’s a pretty aggressive agenda,” SAM Executive Director George Smith said last week by phone from Augusta.

Regarding LD 358, An Act to Create the Maine Fishery Infrastructure Tax Credit Program, Smith said the idea came from SAM’s Fishing Initiative Committee.

The goal is to get the private sector to improve fisheries, fish habitat, water access and infrastructure by offering a tax break.

According to Bath Rep. Thomas Watson’s bill, tax certificates may be issued for up to $5 million per project. Credits must be taken in increments of 25 percent over four years and may not exceed 50 percent of the total tax imposed on the investor for the applicable year.

Regarding LD 655, An Act to Change the Firearms Season on Deer, it would require the state Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife to open the rifle season on deer one week later in central and southern Maine, while allowing hunting in northern Maine to open on the traditional date.

“This was a big request,” Smith said, due to warm weather for the past two years. “People don’t want to hunt deer in October in T-shirts. This year and last year, it was ridiculously warm.”

The change would also better accommodate the sporting camps industry to go to a split season, and, he added, it would open up another week for bird hunters.

They typically pull their dogs out of the woods when firearms for deer season starts.

Regarding An Act to Help New Hunters, Smith said the idea is an initiative of the national Families Afield program, but the goal is to get more adults hunting.

Essentially, the bill would suspend the requirement that new hunters take the hunter safety course before hunting, while requiring the new hunter to be supervised directly by an experienced hunter. He or she would also have to buy an apprentice hunting license.

“It would be a one-season opportunity with the same restrictions, but they have to be right beside the hunter, and, if they like (hunting), they have to take the course the following year,” Smith said.

Three other SAM bills deal with land-access issues, including one that would create a commission to study the use of public lands, while another would establish the principle of “no net loss” of public land open to hunting, Smith said.

That bill would ban the closing of public lands to hunting unless an equal amount of public land was newly opened to hunting.

“No net loss is a national effort. Eighteen states have adopted it,” Smith said.

Two SAM bills deal with coyotes: one would make the hunting of coyotes at night a year-round opportunity, while the other directs the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife to create a management system for coyotes. That would include setting population goals and establishing methods of controlling populations, Smith said.

The measures are just some of many hunting and fishing bills going before legislators this session.