The future of hunting.

[Tom]

Here's a report on it, pretty good, only 8 pages, lots of data.
http://www.nssf.org/PDF/FamiliesAfield.pdf?AoI=generic

Hunter replacement ratio, % of youth that hunt/ % of adults that hunt.

It ranges from 1.16 in Missouri, a good future, to 0.26 in Michigan. States above 0.70 are above average, states beow 0.70 are below average.

They're promoting reqruiting youth to hunting to assure its future, based on some research there. Youth hunting is safe and less restrictive states do better for the future than more restrictive states.

Examples are like you have to be 12 and you have to pass hunter safety and buy a liscense at the same price as an adult before you can hunt deer at all (highly restrictive). Or, any child at any age can hunt any animal for a cheap $6 liscense under supervision of their parent(low restrictions).

The report is good, its only 8 pages. What do you think, comments?

 

[ELKCHSR]

Montana is doing pretty well I see...

State Population Hunters Percent Population Hunters Percent Hunter
Ages 6-15 Ages 6-15 Hunters Ages 16+ Ages 16+ Hunters Replacement
Ratio
Montana 132,000 18,000 13.64% 699,000 171,000 24.46% 0.56

 

[danr55]

I don't think they know what "they" are talking about. If there presumption were true, it would indicate that there are fewer hunters today than there were 50 years ago. Look around you next time you apply for a draw tag. Are there fewer hunters? Not hardly.

Just about anything you can think of, you can prove with numbers. Looking at percentages of anything isn't worth a hoot if you don't know the populations. Two percent of a population of 1000 is significantly less than 1/2 percent of a population of 10 million. You need a lot more information before you can prove that there will be fewer hunters in the future than there was in the past.

 

[BuzzH]

Danr,

Things have changed over time, and the number of people applying for tags is an equally poor way to prove that there are more hunters now than 50 years ago.

People like my Dad and Grandfather never thought of applying for special permits out of Montana, and rarely applied for an "special" or "trophy" deer or elk units. Dad now applies for at least a couple additional states a year, as well as some trophy units.

Also, people today have a lot more disposable income, allowing them to apply for more species, more states, etc. Which translates into poor draw odds...which doesnt necessarily mean theres more hunters.

I dont believe the percentages, and I dont believe your examples either. I think the over-all percentage of people who hunt PER CAPITA is much lower today than 50 years ago. I believe that there are more hunters willing to spend more and take it more seriously than most did 50 years ago.

 

[Tom]

danr, Families Afield is to keep the population percentage up, not the raw number, or get it back up, as it has fallen and is on a down turn since 1990 over the whole nation.

The chart below is for a national survey done every 5 years. There are more hunters than 50 years ago, but its a smaller proportion of the population, plus, hunters and fisherpersons took a down turn about 1990. see below.

They're defining reqruiting at a younger age than Montana does, because they say people are more likely to stick with it if they start young. Montana has a big percentage of hunters but a low reqruiting ratio below age 15. They probably reqruit at the older ages, but we could look up their trends too.

Here's the national trends in fishing, hunting, and other wildlife activities from page 6 of that latest survey. http://fa.r9.fws.gov/surveys/surveys.html

Fishing participants have increased faster than the US population from 1955 on, while hunting kept up with the population growth till 1980.

By 1990 it looks like anglers and hunters took a down turn, compared to the population, although both are at higher numbers than in 1955. The other wildlife watching participant chart if from 1980 to 2001. Non-residential trips and residential feeding of birds, etc. were increasing with the population but then both turned down around 1990/1991 also, like hunting and fishing did.

Things are changing since 1990 for less outdoors wildlife focussed activities, it looks like. I wonder what outdoor activity trends are like that don't involve wildlife.

Not just hunting, not just fishing, not just wildlife watching, there are just plain less percentage of our US population involved with wildlife activities, it appears, at least since 1990.

*******
Here's some info. on what men and women do now that I found on google.com.

Men switched to golf, basketball, etc. from hunting and fishing it looks like? I didn't figure it all out, there's info. on TV and computers in there also.

http://www.leisuretrends.com/local/fun_facts.asp

 

[noharleyyet]

Good points Buzz...I believe the perception of the non-hunter with really no opinion is being morphed by the antis. The ever increasing market driven price is pretty well negating the once common subsistence practice of filling the freezer. The fact that some people will pay tens of thousands of dollars to shoot a rare species or trophy class antlers has its trickle down effects on all hunters. It draws some to the sport and rankles others.

I don't know if the numbers are shrinking, I sense that they are, but it may be that they are not rising in proportion to population increase.

 

[danr55]

Tom, With the phenominal increase in population, and the reduced need for hunting as a means of feeding a family, I don't believe it is practical to maintain a percentage of the population as hunters. If you look at the charts, (I can't read them but I believe that are intended to represent the numbers of hunters and anlgers per 100,000 population) it's plain to see that the numbers have decreased for hunters and increased for anglers. I can suggest that 1. There is a lot more area open to angling than to hunting. and 2. Tag and release is not always possible with hunting as it is with fishing. I think that attempting to keep the percentages of population from decreasing is asking for a closure of hunting as a recreational activity due to lack of playing space. Just an opinion..

Buzz, If everywhere requires tags to hunt, then how are the numbers of applicants for hunt tags a bad indicator of hunter numbers? You through in a factor for tree huggers who apply to keep the tags out of the hands of the blood thirsty murders and another for the fathers who apply for a tag for their 12 year old daughter and/or thier wife (neither of whom have any interest at all in taking game) and you come up with a theoretic number that represents the number of hunters in tag application areas. You combine that with the numbers of persons who actually buy tags over the counter where available, and you have a pretty accurate number of how many hunters there are in this country. Where is the logic faulted?

 

[Michaelr]

the one thing I know for a fact is that there are more hunters in All of the areas that I hunt than there were 15-20 years ago.
I personally would like fewer hunters in the areas I like to hunt.

 

[Tom]

The chart and test show increases in population from 1955 to 2001 of 71%, anglers increases 130% during that period and hunters increased 31%. The verticle axis is percent of the 1955 population for all three on that growth chart. You can go to the link if you want to read it better.

You're right danr, its easier to increase angler numbers using catch and release, than it is to increase hunter numbers. It would be better if the U.S. human population leveled off or decreased and then that hunter reqruitment ratio could be 1. Its not practical to have the human population continue to grow, as we would kill off ourselves, through depletion of our habitat. So, you don't advocate reqruiting youth to hunting, are you going that far with this argument?

 

[BuzzH]

Danr,

I guess I should have been more clear, sorry about the confusion.

Heres what I was thinking.

I'll use Montana for an example.

50 years ago, a larger percentage of the population of MT hunted. However, tags like goats, sheep, moose etc. were relatively easy to get. In the case of goats, they almost always had left-over tags, you could even purchase them OTC. Even into the 60's and early 70's the odds of drawing goats was nearly 100%.

Now, those tags are about impossible to get. There are many more people applying for goat, moose, and sheep...even though the over-all percentage of hunters in MT and nation wide has dropped.

The reason for this is because of the reasons I provided...more disposable income, more people taking it more seriously, trophy hunting vs. meat hunting. etc. Its not a function of "theres more total hunters now, than 50 years ago". Theres more serious hunters willing to spend a lot of money, apply for lots of tags, than there were even 25 years ago.

Thats why I said the reason for tough draw odds cant be based on "theres just more hunters now"...I dont believe thats the reason.

 

[Tom]

That sounds like the states sell out for money. How's that the best for the future of hunting?

We would need data on how many tags people apply for, they don't have that in that US survey, to really see the trends Buzz is talking about. A few years ago, several states had a million hunters, Michigan, Penns., Wisc., now, its only Texas with over a million hunters. That's a bad trend, we have to reqruit young hunters, or hunting will fizzle out, with less and less people to support hunting, there will be less and less game, it seems like too.

I'd rather see more game, I do, lots of places here. Heck, for B&C whitetail, the good old days are now, that's good.

 

[danr55]

Buzz, you make an excellent argument for the point I was trying to make. While the percentage of Americans who hunt may be decreasing, the numbers of hunters are increasing. It's simple math. Twelve % of 30 million is less that 10% of 51 million. Population growth has certainly surpassed the growth in the numbers of hunters, but it's not anywhere close to negative growth. The percentage change is about 2.3:1 from the chart shown, but there is still positive growth in numbers of hunters. Combine that with decreasing habitat, and I think you have an excellent argument for decreased interest in the sport. How many folks out there would still enjoy hunting if you have to fight for a camp site and if you saw people around every bush? For me, at least, half of the pleasure of hunting is the getting away from people, phones, internet and email and all of the trappings of everyday life. I believe that we are reaching a crossroads for this sport and I wish I could be positive about the future I see for hunting. Everytime I go north and see houses and driveways in areas I used to shoot prairrie dogs, and golf courses and country clubs in areas that used to be prime elk habitat, I get a little discouraged. Unfortunately, as long as people keep having people, there has to be somewhere to put them. It's a sad future I see for hunting and for my grandkids.

 

[ELKCHSR]

Dan....

That’s exactly how I first started hunting in Washington, and it's still like that there... Really sucks...

It was nice getting up here, that problem isn't even near as prevalent...

 

[Tom]

We could all run to Alaska and it will be less prevalent still. We need to control population growth, you're making good arguments for that.

If we don't reqruit young hunters, hunting will fizzle out, right? Less to support it, it costs more per hunter, so it goes only to the rich. Bad deal there.

Better habitat, more animals per acre, compartmentalized hunting, spread hunters over more dates, there are lots of methods to manage higher densities of hunters, if we don't stop population growth. These are new challenges for the future of hunting.

Not reqruiting youth is contributing to the death of hunting, not supporting its future.

 

[Washington Hunter]

Problem is anytime anybody mentions population control somebody accuses them of being a Communist. |oo

 

[MarvB]

WH soooo...you think its warranted to control population in order to keep the number of hunters percentages up??

You commie bastage

 

[Washington Hunter]

No, I don't really care about the percentage of hunters, but I do care about the percentage of wildlife habitat left.

If that makes me a commie, oh well, I am what I am.

 

[Tom]

Its more than wildlife habitat, this reference says we're past our current human carrying capacity on the earth right now too, which is bad for everyone.

Earth's carrying capacity? Less than what we are now!!

http://dieoff.org/page112.htm Here's a relevent quote from that article,
"The rapid depletion of these essential resources, coupled with a worldwide degradation of land (Jacobs 1991, Myers 1984, Postel 1989) and atmospheric quality (Jones and Wigley 1989, Schneider 1990), indicate that the human enterprise has not only exceeded its current social carrying capacity, but it is actually reducing future potential biophysical carrying capacities by depleting essential nautral capital stocks. [1]"

That's pretty clear, a scientist, respected in the field, and he gives references, to many people, not enough land.

 

[Washington Hunter]

Yeah, too many damn people yet we keep giving money to countries in Africa and other third world countries, and allowing them to keep their populations at artificially high levels! It's like feeding deer and elk in the winter! It is not a good long term solution. |oo