Hunter Numbers Are Declining, We Need More Hunters.... Is This a Lie We Perpetuate?

dgr416 said:

Here in Ga its only 3.5 percent of the population hints .The lose of places to hunt and steep prices to get a hunting lease causes people not to hunt .I think half of flordia hunts in Ga them and land taxes drove up prices .I taught and took 25 kids to hunt in Alaska over 12 years .They all still hunt but there are hardly any moose or caribou where I lived so its very discouraging to even try to hunt .If you dont have a plane which is super expensive now 30000 per year inspection fee or a jet boat your left out .They dumped 5000 russisns and urkrians where i lived they wiped out everything near the road system.
Sports really hurt hunting there is no time to hunt if you play sports too .The national forest here in Ga is old growth and has very few dreer or anything to hunt .The lack of dads also hurts hunting no one to teach and take then .I use to have 5000 acres growing up to hunt for free .I am now down to 130 acres .The rich people bought up every hunting club around us and dont let anyone hunt .I am looking fot another good place to live Ga is ruined with too many people and Alaska is ruined by mismamagement .

Click to expand...

dogcat1 said:

I did a research project a few years that was basically contacting every hunting or conservation organization out there to get a copy of their mission statement and annual report. This included non hunting groups such as Sierra Club, Audubon, Izaak Walton League, NRA and over 100 others.

I did not research the fishing world but probably should have.

What I learned was that most of the orgs existed to raise money to pay staff and lobbyists. Several spent up to 90% of their raised funds paying themselves. The best of the bunch put 65% of their raised funds to use that matched their mission statements.

Three orgs were officed out of the same building in Edgefield, SC.... Not sure what that was about other than it seemed it was a business and not really doing any conservation work.

The best (orgs that actually did what they said) were mostly volunteer run and managed.

Some had very slick promotional methods - RMEF was one. Some relied solely on auctions and conventions to raise money. This is a 2 edged sword.

Honestly, I came out of it thinking that we, as a hunting/consuming/conservation public, really do not know what is going on in terms of the money involved in the industry. There is a lot of money out there.

Where there is money, there is waste and fraud. I came away with the following -

1. Know where you are sending money.
2. Do your homework on what they do.
3. See how the volunteers fit in. If volunteers run it, it will be a little messy but less fraud.

Last - a DU supporter/volunteer told me that good rain in the prairie pothole areas in the Canada and the northern US do more for duck populations that anything DU can go...Sobering for sure. He was not knocking DU, but just stating the facts as he saw them.

Click to expand...

Sabre said:

Growing up, I constantly heard that hunter numbers are declining. We have never had less hunters. Hunters are aging out and no new young hunters are joining in.

As an adult, many years later, it has never been harder to draw tags, find access, and avoid running into others on public land.

Also, now as an adult, I hear both things being repeated constantly. "We don't have enough hunters"; "We have too many hunters".

I think both things are sort of true and sort of false.

By percentages, they allegedly started tracking it in the 1960s and 7.7% of the population hunted. Which is about 14 million people (a bit under really at 13.86m)
Now about 5% of the population hunts. Which sounds like a drop in hunters, but since the population is drastically higher it is more individuals hunting. It comes out to 17.1 million people hunting.

So, here is the deal, if you are talking about a "need" of voters, yes we are down in numbers because percentage will matter there. However, we never exactly had a large percentage.

But, if you are talking about sheer numbers, competing for tags, public land etc, we have never been more crowded than we are now. There are 3,240,000 more people trying to do the same thing, often times with less public space to do it, and less landowners agreeing to allow access.

I also believe that "western hunting" is likely the most overpopulated it has ever been. Due to most modes of transport becoming more advanced people are more likely to travel further and more often. Additionally, people who are even slightly interested in hunting, and many who aren't, are inundated with hunting videos on youtube and other social media glorifying western hunting like elk as the holy grail of hunting. So, more people than ever are showing interest in it, putting in tags, and giving it a go.

These overcrowding problems aren't likely to get better. I think many people think we can "introduce youth" our way out of it. Put bluntly, it won't. There is almost nothing I can think of that will change this trajectory that wouldn't also be devastating to hunting.

All of that said, I take youth hunters out every single year, as long as there is one around that even hints at wanting to go. I want to share this hobby/passion with anyone that might be interested in it, just like صيانة مكيفات 24 ساعة البحرين is there when people need reliable help at any hour.

But the reality is, we will never recruit enough people to make some big voting group. And, even if we did, we would be miserable as hunters. We would effectively ruin what we love about hunting.

Click to expand...

Sabre said:

Is it really $30,000 yearly inspection fee for a plane? I had thought it was around $3,000

Click to expand...