Bill Cochran is a Roanoke Times outdoors columnist.

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• Trout stocking schedule

This will be the last year you can buy a hunting license the old-fashioned way. As in going to a license clerk in a country store or tackle or gun shop where they write the licenses in longhand in the pages of a half-inch thick license book. Like it has been done for more than 50 years.

If things go as planned, by this time next year the old manual system will be gone and the only way to purchase a license will be through a new Department of Game and Inland Fisheries automated system.

That system already is being merged into the license-selling process. Wal-Mart stores, where about 45 percent of all licenses are sold, has an automated system and so do a number of other license agents, about 80 in all. Wal-Mart worked with DGIF in developing and testing the new system.

Automation has several undeniable advantages for DGIF, for the large license agents and for sportsmen. But some of the current mom and pop license agents, who have served DGIF well for many years, say they see huge disadvantages. A number are expected to stop selling licenses, and that’s a shame.

DGIF has been working on the automated system for several years, and has the support of the governor whose established the goal of moving the state into the Information Age.

“This is a sound business decision,” said Virgil Kopf, DGIF official who is putting the system together. “It is change. Change is not always good and not always bad. The benefits do outweigh the cost of this system.”

Among the benefits for DGIF, the agency no longer will have to print and distribute stacks of licenses, then later collect and inventory them by hand. Costs will be cut and revenue tracking will be easier. The biggest value may be the ability of DGIF to gather a database on its constitutes, the kind that will be useful in marketing efforts. Marketing the outdoors has been a weak point for the agency.

Buyers who purchase several kinds of licenses -- bow, muzzleloading, crossbow, big game -- and will be able to make a quicker purchase. The old way has been to hand write a license of each type. The automated system will print a single sheet with all the licenses purchased noted on it.

License agents will see their paperwork minimized, and no longer will they run out of licenses the day before hunting season. Their license selling tasks will be quicker and cleaner.

And much more expensive. It’s the major downside. Agents will be required to purchase their own automated equipment. They will have to pay for monthly Internet connections. They will need to purchase paper and ink, and may find that they will have to pay for an extra phone line.

Kopf, who is DGIF assistant director of administrative services, says equipment can be purchased for about $400, less if it is used. Internet connections can be found for $10 per month. The equipment doesn’t have to be entirely devoted to license selling, but can be used for other business-related processes.

Ellen Horn, who sells licenses at her Hunter’s Den in Craig County, says she figures the total cost will be more than $400, maybe considerably more.

“There is no way possible to make any money out of it,” she said.

Clerks get a 50-cent fee for each license sold, which means they will have to sell a bunch of them to rise above the red. Sure, if they run a store, tackle shop or gun shop, the license-selling business should help attract customers who will make purchases in addition to a license.

The 50-cent clerk’s fee likely will be increased in the future. The DGIF board has authority to do that for automated sales, not for the old system. Under the old system, license agents were required to deposit $2,000 with DGIF, which was held for security until sales reached a pre-specified point. The automated system won’t require that.

Even so, some clerks are expected to get out of the license-selling business. They can’t see paying that much in start-up and operation equipment. Some simply don’t know anything about computers and don’t want to learn.

“In every state in which automation has been implemented, there have been some that have decided not to participate,” said Kopf. “It will be no different in Virginia.”

Horn decided to quit at first, but now says she will remain an agent. But she doesn’t like what is being forced on her.

“We were the system for 25 or 30 years, now it is if they are saying, ‘We don’t need you anymore.’ That’s how I feel,” she said.

Some rural business owners say this is the third thing coming from DGIF that has hurt their profits. They say they lost sales when DGIF did away with opening day of the trout season. More recently, they have lost customers to a new big game checking system which allows hunters to register their kills by phone rather than checking them at a country store. Now comes the new license system.

“While it is true that it is not the business of the Game Department to keep country stores in business, it is equally true that these stores and the sportsmen that gather in these stores, form a powerful constituency, one that the Game Department can ill afford to lose.” That is the opinion of Jack Randolph, former assistant executive director of the DGIF.

But there is another side to the story. Some agents “have flat told us that if the system is not automated, they will quit being agents,” said Kopf.