Across U.S., fewer hunters, more watchers

[bananas]

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/nation/stories/DN-hunters_03nat.ART.State.Edition1.42470be.html

Across U.S., fewer hunters, more watchers

Wildlife departments worry about loss of revenue from licenses

12:00 AM CDT on Monday, September 3, 2007

From Wire Reports David Crary, The Associated Press


Nationally, the number of hunters is shrinking dramatically and wildlife agencies worry increasingly about the loss of sorely needed license-fee revenue.

<snip>

Primary reasons, experts say, are the loss of hunting land to urbanization plus a perception by many families that they can't afford the time or costs.

"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."

Some animal welfare activists welcome the trend, noting that it coincides with a 13 percent increase in wildlife watching since 1996. But hunters and state wildlife agencies say the drop is worrisome.

<snip>

[byronius]

1. K&R.

I personally wish there was a way to replace this activity with something more difficult and gratifying -- like paintball, but with a more realistic weapon. Robotic prey, with artificial intelligence, and big teeth. You could still maintain and hone the skills, but without causing harm.

Leave Bambi alone. Shoot the robot.

[Nihil]

2. Better still, the Dick Cheney approach ...

... leave Bambi alone and shoot the hunter!

:evilgrin:

[NickB79]

3. And here in MN, our deer population is exploding with predictably bad effects

Our historically cold winters have been replaced by mild ones (last year it "only" got down to -20F about 3 times all winter). The result is that deer here are surviving the winters much better, with more fat reserves. This translates into twin and even triplet births in the spring, with many more of these surviving to adulthood than you would normally see. With fewer hunters, this just compounds the problem. Most predators avoid areas of human habitation, which is also where the number of deer are the highest. The only thing other than people that hunt deer near population centers are coyotes, but they seem to prefer stray cats to wild deer.

The woods at my dad's farm is in bad shape. The spring-blooming wildflowers are almost gone from overbrowsing. Same thing goes for the tree seedlings. Most of the seedlings that either sprout naturally or I plant die without a wire screen to protect them. As the 20 acres of woodland ages and trees die or blow over from storms, there will be fewer trees to replace them.

Hopefully I can get a depredation tag this fall and shoot a few of them. I know it won't make a dent in the population, but at least I'll have tried, and the local food shelf will get some venison.