In their twice a decade comprehensive survey of hunters and anglers the US Fish and Wildlife service has measured a significant increase in the number of hunters and anglers. Hunter numbers up 9% and anglers up 11%.
US Fish and Wildlife Service Report
What does this mean and what affect will this have on wildlife?
This means a lot more money for wildlife as hunters are the source of the lions share of funding. I’m not talking about the purchase of clothing, restaurant food, equipment, and hotels etc, though it too is considerable. What I’m talking about the money directly contributed to purchasing habitat, money for science based management and research. The money comes from a large tax on all firearms and archery equipment as well as ammunition.
A benefit impossible to quantify is the addition of so many dedicated conservationists to the population. It’s impossible to imagine our great public lands, the Parks, National Forests, and Wilderness areas, without considering the famous hunters that were so instrumental in bringing them into existence. The great wildlife biologists of the next decades are hunting their first doves, rabbits, and deer as young teens today.
Photo Troy Dorrel
It’s my wish that hunters become more localized and take responsibility for the wildlife close to where they live. Many parts of the eastern United States are sorely in need of hunting, deer populations have some places exceeded what is healthy. California if you can believe it has rejected science based management and replaced it with sentimentality.
The state by state statistics should be out soon and the final report is due by November. What I’d like to know is who these new hunters are. I’ve noticed online there is an increase in AOH syndrome (Adult Onset Hunting) seemingly driven by the clean food movement and a desire to be locavores. …..Or then again maybe it’s a way to be cool at the next yuppie barbeque. Local game is certainly a way to eat while leaving a very small carbon footprint.
I often hear non hunters describe the experience of being in a wilderness with large predators as being in someone else's territory, of humans as being an interloper in the natural world. For a hunter that is not true, hunters are off trail, one more predator, just as we have been since earliest times.