Hunters remain a powerful force in American society, as evidenced by the presidential candidates who routinely pay them homage, but their ranks are shrinking dramatically and wildlife agencies worry increasingly about the loss of sorely needed license-fee revenue.
New figures from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service show that the number of hunters 16 and older declined by 10 percent between 1996 and 2006 — from 14 million to about 12.5 million. The drop was most acute in New England, the Rocky Mountains, and the Pacific states, which lost 400,000 hunters in that span.
“To recruit new hunters, it takes hunting families,” said Gregg Patterson of Ducks Unlimited. “I was introduced to it by my father, he was introduced to it by his father. When you have boys and girls without a hunter in the household, it’s tough to give them the experience.”
The Humane Society welcomed the new federal data showing a surging number of birdwatchers, wildlife photographers and other wildlife watchers. They increased from 62.8 million in 1996 to 71.1 million in 2006, spending $45 billion on their activities compared to $75 billion spent by hunters and anglers.
I don’t hunt or fish anymore because I’m an old fart who would rather just go for a walk with our dogs. But, one of the factors suggested in the article is interesting.
Where and when I grew up, we fished to eat. I have old friends here in the Rockies who would be concerned for their family’s annual diet if they didn’t get that one elk every season.
But, most of the young members of my extended family plan on writing code or designing new concepts in cyber engineering – to provide necessities as well as treats. They’re really not interested in killing for “sport”. I wonder if that will ever extend to politics?
I blame this squarely on the military war machine since they are the ones drying up all the surplus ammunition that could be used to hunt with our AR-15s and AK-47 (look alikes).
Someone was going to blame Bush and I wanted to be first for a change.
No kidding about the ammo prices. They’ve gone up 50% or more at every retailer. My Swiss K-31 ammo has gone up from $21 per box to $30.
Though honestly, I don’t think ammo prices are what’s lowering the hunters’ numbers. I think hunting is just a dying art due to all the bad publicity guns get in the media.
It’s just a “dying art” – period. Has nothing to do with reality, anymore, in a nation where most of the population is urban if not yet urbane.
It’s like having a sweat lodge in your side yard. If you feel the need to pray – you can email it. If I have a recipe that absolutely requires venison, I can buy a couple of pounds.
It’s dying because all the good places to hunt are being leased out to private hunting clubs or bought & cut up by developers into McMansion home lots. Where I live the fishing is great but to hunt I have to drive two hours just to reach the edge of public land so I have to hit the road at midnight to be in the woods at first light. It’s time for everyone who plays outdoors to pay their share to protect public lands by expanding the 11% excise taxes paid by hunters & fishermen on their gear to every piece of sports & outdoor equipment sold.
I like this news personally. When I hunt, it’s always with a Canon.
That said, I see nothing morally wrong with hunting. I eat meat. I know that the meat I’m eating was killed for my meal. In fact, I’d even go so far as to say that a deer killed by a hunter, even if the shot was imperfect and caused some suffering, probably had a better life overall than a steer on a ranch.
So, my real question about hunting is this. What does it take to say, “Ah, my day off. Hey Phred … let’s go out and have a good time. Let’s go kill something.”
I just don’t find the idea of killing to be fun. Would I do it if I needed to in order to survive? Quite probably, yes, though I’d probably be bad at it and starve to death.
Again though, I recognize that eating meat has all of the effects of hunting without doing it personally. I also recognize that, at least statistically, people that enjoy the outdoors, even doing activities that have an impact on the environment, such as skiing, hunting, and fishing, still have a much higher degree of environmentalism than people that sit on their fat asses watching TV.
Let’s see which would I rather do … sleep or hunt? zzzzzzzzzzzz *snore* zzzzzzz
I live in New England, and yes, hunting licenses have dropped like crazy. Part of the problem is some states’ requirements that anyone applying for a gun or hunting license has to pass rigorous government-approved safety courses, gun locks are required whenever the gun isn’t in the hunters’ hands, the laws are set up to make transporting a gun nearly impossible, hunting seasons are severely restricted, and in some states, the gun licenses permit you to own a gun or rifle… but you can’t buy ammunition unless you take another course. In Massachusetts, the gun License To Carry is $100. Hunting licences are extra. Safety courses are extra. And so on.
Government red tape is what’s killing hunting… no pun intended..
5. My thoughts exactly. While I have hunted in earlier years, the thought of having to kill an animal is distasteful to me. Maybe I’m just getting soft in my old age.
I use to enjoy deer hunting, even though most years I got skunked. My buddies and I use to go bow hunting in August (no, we never got a deer with a bow, but the autumn mountains were beautiful), then we would return in October for the rifle hunt.
But then Fish and Game thought that allowing someone to hunt with a bow and a rifle in the same year was somehow unfair. Never mind that you were issued only one tag, so if you got a deer during the bow hunt, you couldn’t rifle hunt. So now you had to choose one or the other. Goodbye August hunting.
Without the need to plan for the August camping trip, I wouldn’t even think of hunting until October. Then my friends and I would get together and decide where we were going to hunt and if we were going to camp or just drive into an area for the day. The day before the hunt I would buy my license and pack up my truck.
But the Division of Fish and Game decided they didn’t want my type of hunter. First, they decided that there was something immoral about buying a license during the hunting season, so they closed all license purchases three days before the start. (That actually burned me one year when I had forgetten all about the hunt until a friend called me two days before it started.)
Then Fish and Game got this brillant idea for adding to their coffers — force hunters to buy stamps for the area they wanted to hunt. Great, now we had to plan early and buy all of our stamps before they sold out for that area.
But the final straw was when they began to hold lotteries for every hunting area in the state. They forced you to pay an additional fee and apply in June for the area you wanted to hunt. Pretty damn tough to plan a hunting trip with your son and buddies when it was unlikely all of you would “draw out” for the same area.
And now they bitch because hunting isn’t as popular as it use to be? Fuck ’em.
If yer going to hunt an animal it better be edible.
New England, the Pacific, and Rocky Mountain States? That’s just about all the hunting land.
Since they won’t let us hunt in the Capitol building, why bother! 🙂
But seriously, there has been a decline in many traditional hobbies, like woodworking or model railroading. I’d say hunting goes the same way. Any of these require a mentor of some sort, and frankly folks these days are content to sit on their fat asses watching the trials of Paris Hilton in HIGH DEFINITION or playing video games.
Add to that the already mentioned continuing red tape involved with gun ownership and licensing and it shouldn’t surprise anyone.
I can’t explain why hunting is dropping off, and I really don’t care about hunting. It isn’t fun or interesting, and meat comes from the deli anyway.
But I fear that hunting might be down because there might be less to hunt and fewer places to hunt. I’m definitely an urbanite, but I think cities should build up, not out, and I hate this urban sprawl that is turning whole states into vast open miles of strip malls and bland Wonder bread suburbs.
#10 – Angel, they’re all edible.
So people haven’t found killing helpless animals fun anymore, and the state cant get an their license fee revenue, legalize marijuana that oughta take care of it….
And in the northern states, in areas where hunting has been severely restricted, the deer herds explode in size leading to disease and a huge uptick in the number of car-deer collisions. Then they have to send in cops with rifles to thin the herd. There are no simple answers either way.
#14 – moss
Very astute observation and good for an afternoon chuckle. Thanks!
#10: Big harry balls to that…. neither squirrels nor rats nor foxes are things that I’d like to eat, but the first to eat my chicken and duck’s food and the latter my chicken and ducks. Think me evil, but I’d much rather pop a few vermin and eat my own chickens then buy some poor manky anti-biotic and estrogen filled bird from the supermarket!
#14 – OFTLO,
I hate this urban sprawl that is turning whole states into vast open miles of strip malls and bland Wonder bread suburbs.
Minor correction, suburban sprawl. Me too. And as for wonder bread, it’s a wonder anyone eats that crap.
7.
DITTO.
9.
DITTO.
between the Licensing the tags the prices of Guns, and ammo..
The trucks and the supplies, and the camping tents…
HOw many know that ROUGHING IT, isnt in the american vocabulary.
By the time you load up, you might as well take a Motorized RV, park it, out in the middle of a field and scare all the fish away. With this SHINY STINKY giant piece of metal and gas fumes and TV..
Camping AINT what it USED to be.
AND on the point of using a Bow and arrow…Do you know that a cross bow is considered illegal in most states??
I need to add one more thing…HOW many understand that having a LARGE freezer is MANDATORY….And how many have room for those BIG old freezers…?
#19 – Pardon me… Suburban Sprawl is right 🙂
#20, ECA, you’re right. Darn, the state of TX is greedy – $43 annually for a fishing license. Fortunately one doesn’t need a license to fish on privately owned lakes. Even the local Game Warden is friendly when you’re on private property!
Don’t ever get caught fishing without a license — they’ll take all your rods, reels and tackle. Goodbye $1,500. Son of a
I think hunting will make a resurgence. With the demand for organic free range meat, and prices soaring it’s only a question of time.
#1. “Someone was going to blame Bush and I wanted to be first for a change.”
Can I blame Cheney? He’s made it too dangerous to go into the woods.
government regulation by states doesn’t explain the lower numbers in states with little regulation. I hunted with my father when I was young, until one day he shot at a coyote for target practice and it didn’t quite die before we got to it. It kept looking over at me and moaning with its intestines hanging out. I decided I didn’t want to go with him again after that. I have no problem with people who hunt, it just isn’t for me. I also have no problem with guns in general, as long as people are responsible with them. Personally, I don’t carry a gun because I like to drink now and then, and I also have been known to get very angry when someone I know is hurt by someone else.
#9 But the final straw was when they began to hold lotteries for every hunting area in the state. They forced you to pay an additional fee and apply in June for the area you wanted to hunt. Pretty damn tough to plan a hunting trip with your son and buddies when it was unlikely all of you would “draw out” for the same area.
My co-workers who hunt share your pain.
They have to apply for a couple of different areas, around the state, in case they don’t get their first choice.
They can’t plan their vacation too far in advance, because the dates & locations are still up-in-the-air.
If you don’t make the draw, you don’t get your money back – but you do get a “point” towards next-year’s drawing…??
Well if Dick Cheney’s hunting preference is any indication. We won’t be hunting dear and elk anymore. We’ll be hunting down and shooting all the lawyers. Their massive herds need a bit of thining. Or they’ll starve come lean times. 😉
>>I hate this urban sprawl that is turning whole states into vast open >>miles of strip malls and bland Wonder bread suburbs.
You can blame the post WW2 federal housing funding program that essentially encouraged urban sprawl by not funding old housing repair and development in cities and town. But only in new developments away from established cites. IOW, let the cities decay. Move the people into the country side. Where they’ll need more roads to get there. And cars to drive on those roads. And now the lands are too crowded to hunt and enjoy. Because everyone expects to have their own half acre of it as the american dream. Practically no citizen wants to live in towns anymore. But it’s environmentally insane to keep spreading everyone outward. Just to make the damn auto industry richer (and the Oil industry too). There was a documentary on PBS a few weeks back about how this came about. And why? And how in the UK, they preserve the country side for farming and widelife. While the people maining life in towns and commute mostly on foot.
And now the government complains about a loss of revenue, caused by its own actions from decades ago. Maybe they should tax the land developers for the missing revenue. They’re the ones buying up the hunting grounds dirt cheap.
#27 – You can blame the post WW2 federal housing funding program that essentially encouraged urban sprawl by not funding old housing repair and development in cities and town.
I can blame, and do blame that… but lets not leave out the cabal of auto makers who bought up and dismantled public transportation across the country and coerced the development of our highway system.
I hunt and tsome of he biggest problems are urbanization and electronics. There are less places to hunt because of development so you have to drive farther and as a volunteer coach it seems like more kids would rather play video games then baseball let alone hunt. Additionally the liberal media, Hollywood bias against hunting and political correctness in schools that mock hunters and hunting doesn’t help. Unless you are a parent or relative that mentors the sport to the younger generation hunting and fishing like many other American past times are going to fade away. I also get a kick out of people who tell me they don’t beleive in killing animals as they are munching on a chicken sandwich. Talk about out in left field.
23,
another point is that we are killing all the BEST MEAT.
we are not killing the Unhealthy.
we let them ROAM.
Look at what is left of the Buffalo…most of which are infected and dieing.
Also think of the number of animals that USED to be in the country.
Multiply EVERYTHING times 10-100..
europe and the Americas have decimated the animal populations.
do you know what Sturgeon Are??
When Lewis and Clark came around, the Largest were in the range of 40′ in size….NOW you cant find many NEAR 10’…